Fray Bernardino de Sahagun and the Nahua : conflicting interests intertwined
by SilverMoon
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History
Montana State University
© Copyright by SilverMoon (1999)
Abstract:
Some men, a few men, in the early period of colonization, while helping birth New World mythology,
and with their own Eurocentric purposes and curiosity at hand, recorded the world of the conquered
people. One such man was the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun, who wrote, with the
collaboration of indigenous participants, an extensive, encyclopedic compendium. The twelve book
work, Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva Espana, was composed of information gathered from
certain groups of Nahua people, during the mid to late Sixteenth Century. A careful study of this work
serves to prove that the conquest, and its aftermath, were equivocal, contradictory, ambivalent, and
complex processes that involved many peoples, most of whom were not members of the European
Imperial cast. The indigenous people were not the flat surfaces upon which Europe wrote history, but
they were people with sophisticated and distinctive cultural constructs of their own, complex languages
and historical recording processes that were not limited always to oral histories. They were people with
serious attachments to their gods and to their traditions.
Only recently, in the last thirty years or so, the indigenous people’s voices and versions of history have
begun to receive their due credit among scholars and activists.
The information that Sahagun recorded has the power to adjust the indigenous stereotypes, and the
historic assumptions, that still today function to subjugate those people imagined as the vanquished, the
voiceless, those erroneously imagined as parts of cultures that somehow vanished. This work is part of
the effort to show that the Conquest, and subsequent colonization were plurivocal processes. They were
not the mere actions of a homogenized ‘subject’ empire over an equally homogenized Pan-Indian
indigenous ‘object’. Indeed, it was a ‘come-and-go’ of individual and group-specific interests seeking
to represent themselves. FRAY BERNARDINO DE SAHAGUN AND THE NAHUA:
CONFLICTING INTERESTS INTERTWINED
by
SilverMoon
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
o f the requirements for the degree
of
Master o f Arts
in
History
MONTANA STATE UNTVERSITY-BOZEMAN
Bozeman, Montana
December 1999
© COPYRIGHT
by
SilverMoon
1999
All Rights Reserved
ii
^3^'
APPROVAL
o f a thesis submitted by
SilverMoon
This thesis has been read by each member o f the thesis committee and has been
found to be satisfactory regarding content, English usage, format, citations, bibliographic
style, and consistency, and is ready for submission to the College o f Graduate Studies.
Alexander S. Dawson
(Signature)
Date /
Approved for the Department o f History
Thomas R. Wessel
(Signature)
Date '
Approved for the College o f Graduate Studies
Bruce R. McLeod
(Signature)
Date
iii
STATEMENT OF PERMISSION TO USE
In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment o f the requirements for a master’s
degree at Montana State University-Bozeman, I agree that the Library shall make it
available to borrowers under rules o f the Library.
I fI have indicated my intention to copyright this thesis by including a copyright
notice page, copying is allowable only for scholarly purposes, consistent with “fair use” as
prescribed in the U.S. Copyright Law. Requests for permission for extended quotation
from or reproduction o f this thesis in whole or in parts may be granted only by the
copyright holder.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION...................................................................................
I
CHAPTER 2: SAHAGUN AND HlS WORK..:..!.................................................... 19
Sahagun’s N ew Spain Experience ...................................................... 19
Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva Espana ...................... 32
Sahagun and the Arte Adivinatoria ................................................... 41
Sahagun’s Authority to Write About the Nahua ............................ 50
CHAPTERS: SAH AG UN’S RAISON D ’ETRE .......................................................62
Towards A Pluritopical Understanding O f Sahagun’s W ork.......
Sahagun’s Scholastic And Educational Interests...........................
Sixteenth Century Spanish Male ......................................................
Sahagun’s Double Standards: Las Sefialesy IosProndsticos ...
Sahagun The Franciscan ...............................................................
62
63
70
84
87
CHAPTER 4: NATIVE PARTICIPATION ............................................................. 96
Some V eiy Specific Nahua Voices .......
96
The Integration o f N ew Aspects o f the Supernatural
and o f N ew System s.....................................................................1 0 4
The Assimilation O f Sahagun ........................................................... 115
Indigenous Sophisticated Strategies ............................................... 118
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION .........................:.......................... ............................. 122
BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................
128
V
LIST OF TABLES
Table
Page
1. Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Epaha.
A Break D ow n................................................................................................... 35-36
2. Principal Manuscripts o f Sahagun’s Historia General
de las Cosas de NuevaEspana ............ ..........................................................
40
vi
ABSTRACT
Some men, a few men, in the early period o f colonization, while helping birth N ew
World mythology, and with their own Eurocentric purposes and curiosity at hand,
recorded the world o f the conquered people. One such man was the Franciscan friar
Bernardino de Sahagun, who wrote, with the collaboration o f indigenous participants, an
extensive, encyclopedic compendium. The twelve book work, Historia Universal de las
Cosas de Nueva Espana, was composed o f information gathered from certain groups o f
Nahua people, during the mid to late Sixteenth Century. A careful study o f this work
serves to prove that the conquest, and its aftermath, were equivocal, contradictory,
ambivalent, and complex processes that involved many peoples, most o f whom were not
members o f the European Imperial cast. The indigenous people were not the flat surfaces
upon which Europe wrote history, but they were people with sophisticated and distinctive
cultural constructs o f their own, complex languages and historical recording processes that
were not limited always to oral histories. They were people with serious attachments to
their gods and to their traditions.
Only recently, in the last thirty years or so, the indigenous people’s voices and
versions o f history have begun to receive their due credit among scholars and activists.
The information that Sahagun recorded has the power to adjust the indigenous
stereotypes, and the historic assumptions, that still today function to subjugate those
people imagined as the vanquished, the voiceless, those erroneously imagined as parts o f
cultures that somehow vanished. This work is part o f the effort to show that the
Conquest, and subsequent colonization were plurivocal processes. They were not the
mere actions o f a homogenized ‘subject’ empire over an equally homogenized Pan-Indian
indigenous ‘object’. Indeed, it was a ‘come-and-go’ o f individual and group-specific
interests seeking to represent themselves.
I
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
In 15241 a group o f Franciscans generally referred to as ‘the Twelve’ arrived in
N ew Spain under the leadership o f their superior, Martin de Valencia. Many, including
their leader, belonged to strict groups o f the Order o f St. Francis that followed the
Observant tradition.2 These were men willing to suffer for their beliefs, men filled with
missionary fervor. They landed in a world imagined as the soil for the new church. This
was the land that God had chosen because it was pure from the corruption o f the church in
Europe. It was their mission, indeed their divine calling, to prepare the indigenous
population in “the eleventh hour o f the world”3*for the second coming o f Christ and the
establishment o f his Kingdom. They carried with them a copy o f the mandate that
Francisco de Los Angeles, their Minister General, had given them soon before boarding
1 This date taken from several secondary sources presents a discrepancy with Sahagun’s Arte Adivinatoria. He
stated: “[Y] osi el ano de 1525 llegaron a esta tierra doce frailes menores de San Francisco, enviados p o r el
Sumo PontificeAdricmo VI con toda la autoridad necesariay con elfavor del invictisimo Emperador Don Carlos
V, para convertir a Iafe catolica a esta gente Indiana de esta Nueva Espana, la cualya habia pacificadoy
conquistado el valerosisimo D. Hernando Cortes, y a peticion suya fueron enviados estos predicadores
evangelicos.” Quoted from Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta5S publication o f parts o f Fray Bernardino de Sahagun’s Arte
Adivinatoria, in Bibliografia M exicana del Siglo XVI: Catalogo Razonado de Libros Impresos en Mexico de 1539
a 1600 Con biografias de autores v otras ilustraciones. Agustin M illares Carlo, Ed. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Economica, 1954. P. 382.
2 “Virtually from the order’s beginnings in the early thirteenth century, there had existed an internal tension over
whether to adhere strictly to an original rule o f austerity, simplicity, and renunciation o f property... [Observants] or
to lead more material lives as a way to exert greater influence in the world...[Conventuals],55 Kenneth M ills and
William B. Taylor, Edts. Colonial Spanish America: A Documentary History. Wilmington, Delaware: A
Scholarly Resources fric. Imprint, 1998. P .4 7 .
3 Statement made by the Dominican Father Bartolome Las Casas in his “Octavio Remedio.55 Quoted from Luis N .
Rivera. A Violent Evangelism: The Political and Religious Conquest o f the Americas. Louisville, Kentucky:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992. P. 59.
2
ship in Spain. It was a record o f his words, and testament to the Franciscans’ missionary
zeal:
Among the continuous cares and affairs which daily present
themselves to me and occupy my mind, this one presses, worries, and
afflicts me first o f all, as to how [...] I might labor with the apostolic man
and father o f ours. Saint Francis, toward liberating and snatching away
from the maw o f the dragon the souls redeemed with the most precious
Blood o f Our Lord Jesus Christ, deceived by satanic wiles, dwelling in the
shadow o f death, held in the vain cult o f idols.
[...] But now that the dawn is far spent and passing away, which is
the eleventh hour o f which the Gospel speaks, you are called [...] not hired
for a price like the others, [...] not seeking your own interests, but those o f
Jesus Christ without promise o f pay or reward [...] To you, therefore, O
sons, with the last end o f the world at hand, I your father cry out and bestir
your minds that you defend the King’s army already falling and presently
freeing from the foe, and, taking up the victorious contest Of the heavenly
Victor, you preach by word and work unto the enemy. [...] Run therefore
thus with such speed as to gain the victory.
[...] I send you to convert with words and example the people who
do not know Jesus Christ Our Lord, who are held fast in the blindness o f
idolatry under the yoke o f the satanic thrall, who live and dwell in the
Indies which are commonly called Yucatan or N ew Spain or Tierra Firme.
[...] I charge and command you the twelve through the merit o f holy
obedience, and the rest who in the future should join your company [...].4
Only five years later, Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun followed in their footsteps as one
o f “the rest who in the future should join.”5 He arrived in N ew Spain in 1529. In his own
words: “The first to come after them [the Twelve] were the Dominican fathers, and the
4 Partial quote from the “Orders Given to the Twelve” by Fray Francisco Angeloram5 Minister General on October
30th. o f the year 1523 (Originally given in Latin). Published in Kenneth M ills and W illiam B. Taylor, Edts.
Colonial Spanish America: A Documentary History. Wilmington, Delaware: A Scholarly Resources Inc. Imprint,
1998. P .48-5 1 .
5 Fray Francisco de Los Angeles (Angelorum). See note 4.
3
second were twenty observant friars o f St. Francis (amongst whom I came).”6 Sahagun
was part o f the same mendicant order as the Twelve, and bearer o f the same dream. He
had volunteered, as was the custom, to make the journey under Fr. Antonio de Ciudad
Rodrigo.7 Sahagun and the other new Franciscans were, as the Twelve, obligated under
the Minister General’s mandate to preach to, and convert those indigenous people o f N ew
Spain living under the “yoke o f the satanic thrall.”8
AJfter his arrival, Sahagun began a project that would encompass the remainder o f
his days, over half a century. He dedicated himself to the study o f the Nahua world,
including multiple aspects o f their culture, language, religion, social and governmental
traditions, and the alleged Nahua version o f the Conquest. The result o f his efforts
translated into the most complete, if scattered at present, piece o f “contact zones”9
writings on indigenous matters, in Mesoamerica, compiled during the colonial period. It
has captured the minds, curiosity, and imagination o f countless scholars. It even earned
6 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. IaIcazbalceta5 1954. Prologue to the Arte Adivinatoria. P .3 8 2 ,
column I. Original wording: “L osprimeros que despues de ellos [the Twelve] vinieron fueron Iospadres
dominicos, y Ios segundos fueron veintefrailes de San Francisco de la Observancia (entre Ios cualesyo VineJF
7 Icazbalceta explains in his biography o f Sahagun that Fray Antonio was supposed to recruit forty friars but was able
to find only twenty. He explains the difference by noting that: “For el voto de obediencia no tenian obligation de
pasar a estas nuevas regiones, y asi las reclutas eran de voluntarios, p o r la cual no siempre se obtenia el nimero
deseadoF Icazbalceta5 1954, p. 327n6.
8 Fray Francisco de Los Angeles (Angelorum). See note 4.
9 Mary Louise. Pratt. Imperial Eves: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and N ew York: Routledge5 1992.
P. 4 and 6. Although Pratt’s study is specifically directed towards ppst-Enlightenment travel writings, when there
existed a sort o f religious skepticism unlike the religious fervor o f Sahagun’s epoch, a few o f her guiding premises
are valuable for this study. She defines ‘contact zones’ writings as those produced in “the space o f colonial
encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other
and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions o f coercion, radical inequality, and intractable
conflict.” P. 6.
4
Sahagun the title o f ‘Tather o f Anthropology in the N ew World.”10 This man is, without
a doubt, one o f the most intriguing figures o f the sixteenth century.
The known corpus o f his work is held by different hands around the world, an
aspect that adds to the difficulty for scholars o f Sahagun to form a complete picture.11
And Although still much o f Fray Bernardino’s work is unaccounted for or incomplete.
Enough o f his materials exist in order to attempt to answer two interrelated questions:
What possessed this man to invest so much time and energy into the compilation o f
indigenous information, and what drove some o f the indigenous people to participate in
the project? The answers to these questions are a reflection o f the complex and equivocal
nature o f the bi-cultural encounter. Both sides o f the exchange, the Franciscan and the
Nahua elite, used the compendium to pursue their own interests, and both sides
maintained portions o f control over the creative process. Sahagun was, at once, a scholar,
a Spanish male o f his times, and a devoted Franciscan. Each one o f these roles interplayed
with, and became affected by the utterly new cultural dialogue between the N ew World
10 Miguel Leon-Portilla. Sahagun Early Years in Tlatelolco. Chipping Awav on Earth: Studies in Prehispanic and
Colonial M exico in Honor o f Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles Dibble. Eloise Quinones Keber, Ed. with the
assistance o f Susan Schroeder and Frederic Hicks. Lancaster, California: Labyrinthos, 1994. P. 19nl0. Here,
Leon-Portilla quotes an acknowledgment o f Sahagun included in Cross-Cultural Understanding: Epistemology in
Anthropology. N ew York: Harper and Row, 1964. P. v. which reads: “To Fray Bernardino de Sahagun,
Franciscan Missionary, Father o f Anthropology in the N ew World. H e devoted sixty years o f his life to
understanding from the inside, in the light o f their philosophy, the culture o f the ancient M exicans.”
11 “There is no edition o f the General History o f the Things o f New Spain in which the variants contained in the
oldest extant manuscripts o f the History or parts o f it are considered [...] There exist, furthermore other texts by
Fray Bernardino o f which there is not even a precise description, let alone a critical edition. [...] We know for a
fact that in the Ayer Collection, the National Library o f M exico, and the Vatican Library there exist several other
documents belonging to the body o f Sahagun’s works which up to now either have not been taken into
consideration or have not merited more than summary descriptions.” Miguel Leon-Portilla. The Problematics o f
Sahagun: Certain Topics Needing Investigation. Sixteenth Century Mexico: The Work o f Sahagun. Munro S.
Edmonson, Ed. Albuquerque: University o f N ew M exico Press, 1974. P .240-241.
5
and the Old. The reasons for Fray Bernardino’s obstinate dedication to his compendium
were multiple and at times conflicting, and they were bom out o f Sahagun’s historical,
social, and religious context: As a scholar, the Franciscan felt drawn towards the learning,
understanding, and preserving o f a language, and culture (both homogenized in his
mind)12 unlike anything the Friar had ever known. As a teacher, Sahagun was moved by
the culture and its people. He was impressed by his pupils’ intellectual capacities, and the
speed o f their accomplishments. Fr. Bernardino sincerely loved his students and the
Nahua teaching tradition. He was so impressed by it that it became one o f his goals to
save it. As a Spanish man, he had to find a way to make graspable, and translate a fully
foreign experience, and then position the indigenous versions o f ‘S e lf and the universe, to
which he was constantly exposed, in relationship to Spain and the Catholic Church. Also,
as a Spanish male in the sixteenth century, Sahagun had to reconstruct the indigenous
reality into something that would fit his pre-existing categorical assumptions; such as
redefining the position o f indigenous females to match that o f Spanish ones. As a
Franciscan, Fr. Bernardino had come to N ew Spain after taking vow s o f obedience: He
had to fulfill his superiors’ mandates to gather the information that he set out to collect.
Also as a Franciscan, Sahagun was part o f a millenarian movement: The Messianic dream
12 In the cauldron that concocted the dichotomical sophism between the ‘Old World’ and the ‘N ew World’, a few
people faced with indigenous cultural, traditional, religious, and linguistic plurality (multiculturalism), through
their American experience, could not escape meeting a challenge to their mode o f oppositional thinking. These
men fell in in-between crises that illuminates the conflicted nature o f their human experience, and the struggles
produced when contextualized categories are challenged. Tension cracks opened between these men’s own
cultural contexts, and their corollary ideologies, and the indigenous world all around them. One such man was the
Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagun. One o f his responses to the indigenous multi-cultural reality was to
homogenize it, to lump all o f the Native Americans into one ‘Other’. This was one o f the early exercises o f PanIndianism.
6
set up the Americas as the depository, willing or not, o f the Catholic God’s grace. This
land would be the seat o f the N ew Church, and Christ would come back and set up his
millenarian reign there. It was after Sahagun realized that the numerous conversions
claimed, by the Twelve, to have taken place, were not complete, nor truthful, that he set
out to save the dream by sounding the alarm on the indigenous deceit. His solution was to
record every detail o f idolatrous practices. This would make them known, and hence, it
would make them easier to eradicate.
All in all. Fray Bernardino’s agendas were many. Saving the culture and language
conflicted with the eradication o f indigenous religious practices, yet the Franciscan,
somehow managed to allow all his agendas to co-exist. Perhaps the greatest buffer, that
which allowed the convergence o f opposing goals, was the Friar’s perspective o f himself,
his culture, and religion, as superior to those o f the indigenous people, to whom he
referred at times in paternalistic, and infantilizing terms: “This people [the Nahua] so
childlike and so easyly deceived.”13
The Modern Theorist Pierre Bourdieu defined this superior perspective as
“strategies o f condescension [...meaning] those symbolic transgressions o f limits which
provide, at one and the same time, the benefits that result from conformity to a social
definition [Sahagun’s contexts and categories] and the benefits that result from
transgression [Sahagun’s experience-near participation with the indigenous world].”14
13 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume II. Book VII. Prologue. P. 255.
“[E].sta gente tan pdrvu lay tan f a c ilpara hacer enganada [the Naliua].”
Original wording:
14PierreBourdieu. Language and Symbolic Power. John B. Thompson, Ed. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson,
Trans. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991. P .1 2 4 . And supported as w ell on Social
7
For Sahagun, superiority and condescension, allowed him to infiltrate the Nahua world,
and write about it in the era o f the Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion, while maintaining an
omniscient voice.
Sahagun’s compendium unintentionally opened the doors for Nahuas’ agendas to
represent themselves. The Nahua elite narrated their side o f the story, and participated in
the making o f the new historiography. Their narrative represented their interests;
interests that were grounded on their pre-existing categories and their own point-ofperspective15 as the vestige o f the indigenous elite. These participants aimed to retain
access to power, and as people subjugated under a completely foreign system, they faced
fundamental issues: They needed to keep cultural cohesion and to retain a coherent sense
o f themselves and their experiences. They had to find ways to integrate, through their pre­
existing concepts, the new faces o f the supernatural. Through their participation in the
creation o f the Historia General, they made a bid for personal and cultural survival
through sophisticated subversive, and traditional-based strategies, such as: The
retrospective writing o f history and the historiographical redemption o f an empire lost, the
assimilation o f aspects o f the outsider’s world, the re-education o f their young, and even
the willful giving o f misinformation to the outsider.
Space and Symbolic Power. Ia Other Words: Essays Toward a Reflexive Sociology . M atthewAdamson1Trans.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. 123-137. P .1 2 7 .
15 ‘Point-of-perspective’ is a term that seeks to express the specific nature o f the initial categories, in both sides o f
the exchange: It refers to those categories which met at the time o f contact. I do not mean to imply, however, that
those were static, primordial categories. In fact they had weaved themselves through time and experience into
what they were at the time when ‘the-many-Europes’ (the many sub-groups and sub-contexts usually bunched
together) met ‘the-many-Americas’, and continued to do so during and after the initial encounter.
8
The Historia General provided a very specific group o f indigenous people with a
chance to preserve their own point-of-perspective on their culture, their reality, what was
or was not worth preserving, and even more significantly, it created conditions that would
allow them to hold on and pass down that which was important to them, albeit in limited
form. However, it was the version o f particular groups o f Nahua elite that was recorded,
and not the Universal or General Historia o f all o f the indigenous people o f N ew Spain.
The questions addressing the reasons behind the creation o f Sahagun’s
compendium have remained unanswered on their own, and most significantly as they relate
to each other. In the last three decades o f the Twentieth Century, the scholarship on
Sahagun has been defined by a poetic backlash to the centuries o f near-obscurity suffered
by the Franciscan’s work, and subsequent traditionally Eurocentric interpretations. The
new historiographical reaction has tended to eulogize the man and his efforts, and to
celebrate the alleged early-ethnographic value o f his work. As necessary as this equalizing
tendency has been, the study o f Sahagun as a pro-Indian ethnographer is incomplete. It
misses the complexity o f the Franciscan’s, and the Nahuas’ relationships with their N ew
Spanish experiences. Sahagun can not be fully understood if he is limited to a
representation o f the colonial-encounter-birthing-indigenism. The Historia General, as its
participants, must be analyzed through its complexity.
9
As early as 1970, scholar John Leddy Phelan referred to Fray Bernardino as “One
o f the pro-Indian leaders,”16 and “the scholar o f the pro-Indian party, who found his
investigation o f Indian antiquities hindered and obstructed by the anti-Indian faction.”17 In
1974, Arthur J.O. Anderson, (together with Leon-Portilla the best and most respected o f
scholars in the field) wrote: ‘In becoming an indigenist and an ethnologist he [Sahagun]
worked not only against the prevailing trends o f his time but against what was a part o f his
own training, ambition, and personality.”18 In the 1980’s, Tzevetan Todorov eulogized
Sahagun and admired his learning o f the indigenous language. Todorov based his
adulation o f the Franciscan on the claim that “usually it is the conquered who learns the
conqueror’s language.”19
In fact, Sahagun’s linguistic studies, although particularly magnificent in their
quality were not uncommon. They were indeed the norm for the Franciscans in N ew
Spain. Furthermore, linguistic agility did not constitute pro-Indianism, nor did it reduce
the friar to an exceptional sort o f conqueror. Also, in the 1980’s and 1990’s,
distinguished scholars o f Sahagun such as Miguel Leon-Portilla, Inga Clendinnen, Barry
D. Sell, and Luis N. Rivera, have tended to look at Fray Bernardino in a compensatory
manner that seeks to see beyond traditional Eurocentrism. Sell, for example, named the
16 John Leddy Phelan. The M illennial Kingdom o f the Franciscans in the N ew World. Second Revised Ed.
Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1970. P. 74.
17 John Leddy Phelan, 1970. P. 57.
18 Arthur J. O. Anderson. “Sahagun in H is Times.” Sixteenth Century Mexico: The Work o f Sahagun. Munro S.
Edmonson, Ed. Albuquerque: University o f N ew M exico Press, 1974. 17-25. P .2 4 .
19 Tzevetan Todorov. The Conquest o f America. N ew York: Harper Perennial, 1982. P .2 1 9 .
10
friar as the “initiator o f a ‘golden age’ o f Nahua related scholarship as well as participant
in it,”20 while Clendinnen, who consistently tends to eulogize Sagahun, described the
Historia General as “the record o f the recollections o f native nobles o f the world they
once knew, compiled and transcribed thirty and more years after the conquest, under the
direction o f the remarkable Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagun.”21 This description
creates the impression that Sahagun’s own interests were not imposed in the project.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Ledn-Portilla wrote, in 1994, that “he [Sahagun] thought it was o f prime
importance to record what w e now call ‘the Vision o f the Vanquised’,” and he adds that
the recording o f the indigenous perspective came “at the sole initiative o f Sahagun.”22
Neither o f these statements hits the mark. Sahagun began the compilation o f indigenous
information upon orders from his superiors, and the Franciscan himself explains his
intention in the prologue to B ook XH: “It was not done so much to obtain some truths o f
the versions given by the same Indians who took part in the conquest, as it was to record
the language that the natives used on things o f war and the arms they used.”23 Finally,
Rivera presented the Franciscan as an example o f “the humanizing effect o f Christian
20 Barry D. Sell. “A ll the Way to Guatemala: Sahagun’s Sermonario o f 1548.” Chinning Away on Earth: Studies in
Prehispanic and Colonial M exico in Honor o f Arthur J, 0 , Anderson and Charles D ibble. Eloise Qihones Keber,
Edt. Lancaster: Labyrinthos, 1994. 37-44. P. 39.
21 Inga Clendinnen. Aztecs: A n Interpretation. Cambridge and N ew York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. P .8 .
22 M iguel Leon-Portilla5 1994. P. 17.
23 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun’s Historia General. Garibay, 1956. Volume IV. Book XE. AlLector. Pg. 21.
Original wording: “[It was] no tanto para sacar algunas verdades de la relacion de Ios mismos indios que se
hallaron en la conquista, cuanto p o r poner el lenguaje de las cosas de la guerray de las armas que en ella usaban
Ios naturales.”
11
doctrine,”24 based on the statement made by Sahagun that the indigenous people were
“from the same trunk o f Adam like us.”25 Rivera’s praise forgets that Sahagun also wrote
that the indigenous people were part o f Satan: “This natives are a good part o f him.”26
The acknowledgment o f Sahagun’s equivocal, and often contradictory statements, is the
exclusive way to reach an understanding o f the Franciscan’s contribution. Picking only
those statements which support an apparently much desired indigenist perspective is an
oversimplification. It only dilutes Sahagun’s expression. The best course o f action is to
follow James Lockhart’s example, who in his impressive 1992 study on the Nahuas wrote:
“[EJveiything in a given society, or simply in a given group o f people in contact with each
other, affects everything else, and some phenomena are pervasive, so that to achieve the
greatest insight one should proceed on a broad front, seeing many elements in relation to
each other.”27
The intent o f this work is to dialogue with recent historiography by continuing to
step away from Eurocentrism, while avoiding a partisan, and exclusively positive
exploration o f Sahagun’s work. This study constitutes a move away from the
dramatization o f the Franciscan as the effigy o f the conqueror. It stands in disagreement
with scholars like Jesus Bustamante Garcia who, in 1991, reduced Fray Bernardino’s
24 L uisN . Rivera, 1990. P. 151.
25 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneral. Volume I. Book I. Prologue. P .3 1 . A lso quoted by Rivera,
1990. P. 151.
26 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneral. Volume H. Book V. Prologue. P .1 3 .
“[E]sfc>s naturales son buena parte de el.”
Original wording:
27 James Lockhart. The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History o f the Indians o f Central Mexico.
Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1992.. P. 9.
12
perceptive to that o f a “nefarious” inquisitor.28 It also aims to avoid eulogizing the friar as
a pro-Indian activist. The complexity o f Sahagun’s interests and agendas can only be fully
explored by seeking the plurality o f his experiences.
This analysis focuses primarily on the late Spanish version o f Sahagun’s
compendium put together in 1956 by Angel Maria Garibay titled Historia General de las
Cosas de Nueva Espana: Escrita p o r Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun Franciscano y fundada
en la documentacion en lengua mexicana recogida p o r Ios mismos naturales,29 and
Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta’s publication o f the prologue, the dedication to the reader, and
the first chapter o f the ccArte Adivinatoria” in 1954, together with a host o f secondary
texts, to find answers to the tw o questions posed above.
The basis o f this study rests on a few fundamental guiding theoretical principles
and assertions. Initially, it rests on the awareness that the study o f the past from a new,
contemporary perspective is always a presentist exercise that revises history as it seeks to
understand it. Traditionally, Western culture has dictated the keys through which the rest
o f the world would be interpreted. Starting with Sahagun’s and those o f his
28 Bustamante Garcia. Fray Bernardino de Sahagun: Una Revision Critica de Ios Manuscritos v de su Proceso de
Comnnsicion. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de M exico, Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliograficas,
Biblioteca Nacional y Hemeroteca Nacional, 1991. P .3 7 6 . A s quoted by Browne, 1996. P. 111. Original
wording included: “Sahagun es, sin duda, unfinisimo observadory un excelente conocedor de la cultura indigena
tradicional, p e w aqtd, con mas claridad que en otras partes, se destaca su punto de vista fundamental: no es un
etndlogo, es un inquisidor.”
29 Angel Maria Garibay K., Edt. Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espana: Escrita p o r Fr. Bernardino de
Sahagun Franciscano y fundada en la documentacion en lengua mexicana recogida p o r Ios mismos naturales.
Translation: General History o f the Things o f N ew Spain Written by Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun, Franciscan, and
based oil the documentation in the M exican language Gathered by the Same Natives. Mexico: Editorial Porrua, S.
A ., 1956.
13
contemporaries, and extending towards the present, texts have tended towards Eurodifiusionism. These tendencies served to maintain the status quo. As J. M. Blaut, modem
author, argued: “All scholarship is diffusionist insofar as it axiomatically accepts the
Inside-Outside model, the notion that the world as a whole has one permanent center from
which culture-changing ideas tend to originate, and a vast periphery that changes as a
result (mainly) o f diffusion from that single center.”30 Consequently, Native Voices have
suffered. Traditional historiography treated the indigenous perspective as non-existent or
derived from undependable sources. Tzevetan Todorov, in his 1982 thoughtful, although
slanted work The Conquest o f America, wrote: “[T]exts expressing Indians’ point o f
views [are] especially problematic: as it happens, given the absence o f Native writings,
they are all subsequent to the conquest and therefore influenced by the conquerors.”31
Historians can not afford to give credence to the colonialist illusion that there exists some,
or any kind o f Euro-cultural-superior-perspective, which produced the only applicable and
usable historical sources. That belief, so imbedded that it functions often at systematically
unconscious levels, is colonialism’s self-serving delusional myth.32 In Sahagun’s
approach, although he interpreted the indigenous world from within the confines o f his
own categorical assumptions, the native people were never imagined as voiceless.
30 J.M. Blaut. The Colonizer’s M odel o f the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. N ew York:
The Guilford Press, 1993. Pg. 13.
31 Tzevetan Todorov, 1982. P. 54.
32 A s Father Bartolome de Las Casas noted: “It is a wonder to see how , when a man greatly desires something and
strongly attaches h im self to it in his imagination, he has the impression at every moment that whatever he hears
and sees argues in favor o f that thing.” Father Bartolome de Las Casas. Historia de las Indias. V. 1 ,44, as quoted
by Tzevetan Todorov in The Conquest o f America. N ew York: Harper Perennial, 1982. P .2 1 .
14
Without his collaboration with Nahua informants, Sahagun could have never produced his
compendium. The Nahua elite used the Historia General to create what Mary Louise
Pratt called an “autoethnography.” In it, they “represent[ed] themselves in ways that
engage[d] with the colonizer’s own terms [...which] involve[d] partial collaboration with
and appropriation o f the idioms o f the conqueror.”33
“The mechanism o f acculturation is basic to any culture; all cultures live in a state
o f permanent acculturation.”34 This implies a need to steer away from over-simplification
o f events by treating the colonial experience at large, and the encounter between Sahagun
and the Nahua people in particular, as a dichotomic event. This type o f simplification is
capable o f creating a historiography that supports the dichotomy between colonizer and
colonized, powerful and powerless, victor and vanquished, Christian and heathen, agent
and subject, Europe and the N ew World.35 The study o f indigenous America under the
visage o f the dichotomy between two opposing poles is an illusory deception that serves
to reiterate the position o f the colonial force as winner, and the colonized as loser. As
Jose Rabasa expressed it: “The dichotomy ...is too simplistic.”36 These studies necessitate
what modem scholar Walter Mignolo calls diatopical, and Jose Rabasa extends to
33 Mary Louise Pratt, 1992. P. 7.
34 Rigoberta Menchu. L Rigoberta MencM: An. Indian Woman in Guatemala. Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, Ed. Ann
Wright, Trans. N ew York: Verso, 1983. Quote from the editor’s introduction, pg. xvii.
35 N ew World terminology is itself obvious proof o f Euro-difEusionist mentality. The continent that the Europeans
‘bumped’ into was only new to them, yet it has become an established term, with all its conceptual meanings, in
historiography.
36 Jose Rabasa. Inventing America: Spanish Historiography and the Formation o f Eurocentrism. Norman and
London: University o f Oklahoma Press, 1993. P. 13.
15
pluritopical understandings?1 Ultimately, a simplistic approach based on totalizing
representations objectifies the indigenous people. It turns them into a sort o f literary form,
whose purpose is to illuminate the greatness, or more precisely the power, eulogized or
criticized, o f the imperialist ruler. Defining-by-opposition ignores the fact that people, as
they invent themselves, and the systems they create, are equivocal, contradictory, and
fluid. It neglects the “contradictory impulses that motivate all human beings and
groups.”3738 It attempts to create an ultimate, authoritative, solid, and final statement o f
power and powerlessness that consequently alienates the indigenous people that it seeks to
understand. Indeed, it is no less a cultural construction than passing fashions, though
sadly less ephemeral. The exchange o f cultural, linguistic, organizational, political, and
even religious traits moved in a bi-directional manner, at different levels o f intensity,
between the many different groups sustaining the exchange. Sahagun, and the indigenous
people who participated in the compilation o f the Historia General, as informants, scribes,
or translators, co-created the compendium and affected each others’ experiences. The
result was a magnificent four volume work that recorded the over-valorized perceptions o f
privileged voices: Sahagun and his Catholic-colonial narrative, and particular groups o f
Nahua elite and their versions o f events, and o f matters worth recording,
v
37 JoseRabasa, 1993. P. 14.
38 Octavio Paz. The Labvrintb o f Solitude: Life and Thought in M exico. Lysander Kemp, trans. N ew York: Grove
Press, INC., 1961. P. 96.
16
Similarly, although Eurocentric39 historiography has traditionally taken for granted
that the arrival o f ‘the-many-Europes’, and their representatives to the ‘N ew World’ was
the momentous, and rupturing event that rewrote the whole world under European
models, in reality, as “any new phenomenon is likely to be interpreted in the first instance
in terms o f existing images and categories.”40 AU the participants interpreted and
constructed reality based upon their own pre-existing categories. Sahagun categorized the
indigenous people, with whom he had contact, as homogenous representations o f the
indigenous world. This was a world automatically integrated, in Fray Bernardino’s mind,
into the Christian landscape. However, those same indigenous people also integrated
Christianity, and Sahagun himself, as an acceptable piece o f their cosmology at large. In
his study o f the conquest o f Mexico, modem scholar Serge Gmzinski explained the
conflicted dynamics produced during the colonial encounter:
[T]he most disconcerting aspect o f the Spanish conquest [and
subsequent colonization] was probably the irruption o f other apprehensions
o f the real, unlike those o f the Indians, and not altogether like ours today.
[...Wjithout visible reference, without local links, [...] the evangelizers
wanted the Indians to bring their adherence, namely, to the Christian
supernatural. The undertaking was at the same time easy and practically
impossible. Easy, because [...] the two worlds agreed in valuing the
supernatural to the point o f making it the ultimate, primordial and
indisputable reality o f things. Impossible, since the way they conceived it
39 I choose to use Rabasa’s definition o f Eurocentrism: “By Eurocentrism I do not simply mean a tradition that places
Europe as a universal cultural ideal embodied in what is called the West, but rather a pervasive condition o f
thought.” JoseRabasa. Inventing America: Spanish Historiography and the Formation o f Eurocentrism. Norman
and London: University o f Oklahoma Press, 1993. P. 18.
40 Olivia Harris. “The Coming o f the White People: Reflections on the Mythologization o f History in Latin
America.” Colonial Spanish America: A Documentary History. Kenneth M ills and W illiam B. Taylor, Edts.
Wilmington: ScholarlyResources,Inc., 1998. P .3 4 -4 5 .
17
differed in every aspect. Misunderstandings proliferated. [..JE ach
hastened to project his own grids on to the adversary.41
Consequently, all sides o f the exchange operated under what James Lockhart calls “double
mistaken identity.” This is a process by which “each side o f the cultural exchange
presumes that a given form or concept is operating in the way familiar within its own
tradition and is unaware or unimpressed by the other’s side interpretation.”42 Fray
Bernardino de Sahagun categorized the Indigenous people o f N ew Spain by molding that
which appeared familiar so that it could fit his understanding o f the world. That which
appeared non-familiar was also forced into the pre-existing patterns o f Sahagun’s cultural
conceptions, becoming often marginalized as idolatry or indigenous ignorance,
condemnable or curable. He homogenized the many indigenous groups in Mexico
following “an old textual practice that readily complemented] the processes o f
deculturation and deterritoriaBzation”43 which the colonizing forces had already set in
motion. The Nahua people responded in kind. They integrated, particularly in the initial
stages o f colonization, the Spanish/Catholic incoming information into their own pre­
existing categories. They responded to the Christian God by accepting him as one more
deity in their pantheon, following pre-Hispanic traditions that had historically build the
ranks o f Nahua Deities through the adoption o f the Gods o f people with whom they came
41 Serge Gruzinski. The Conquest o f Mexico: The Incorporation o f Indian Societies into the Western W orld 16th18th Centuries. Eileen Corrigan, Trans. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993. P. 184.
42 James Lockhart. “Some Nahua Concepts in Postconquest Guise.” History o f European Ideas. Vol. 6, No. 4, p.
465-482, 1985. I have decided to go with Lockhart’s definition to support my argument without making changes.
His expertise hardly needs adjustment here.
43
Maru Louise Pratt, 1992. P. 64.
18
in contact. They appropriated the imposed forms and used them to express their own
narrative. They interpreted the foreign experience in familiar terms. In an “unspoken
presumption o f sameness,”44 they, as the Spaniards also had done, related to “Spanish
introductions pragmatically as things they might make their own, according to criteria o f
familiarity, usability, and availability.”45 SahagmTs compendium fitted the criteria in all
three accounts: It was a chance for the elite to continue their historiographical traditional
control, it was a usable tool to express their.interests, and it was most available; after all
Sahagun asked the Nahua elite for help. Both the Nahua elite and Sahagun functioned
under a system o f dependent reciprocity which allowed for the creation o f the Historia
General de las Cosas de Nueva Espana.
44 James Lockhart, 1992. P. 445.
45 James Lockhart, 1992. P. 443.
19
CHAPTER 2
SAHAGUN AND HIS WORK
Sahagun’s N ew Spain Experience
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun was bom in 1499 or 1500, under the last name
Ribeira,46 in Leon, province o f Spain, soon after the so called ‘Discovery’ o f what became
known as the N ew World. Later, upon taking the habit,47 he adopted the name o f his
natal village as his own, just as Franciscans were accustomed to do. The good father lived
until the fifth o f February, 1590, when he departed this world after a period o f illness. He
died at the infirmary o f the convent o f San Francisco, Mexico. He was about ninety years
old and had spent sixty-one o f those years in N ew Spain. M ost o f that time he dedicated
to building the Historia General. The compendium was the physical manifestation o f
Sahagun’s sense o f guilt at his initial belief that the conversions had already taken place,
which had lulled him into wasting time and allowing the upper hand to the Devil and his
doings, and his intense dedication to the eschatological war he waged against the “enemy
o f God and o f men.”48 The Historia was, in its simplest form, the collection o f all the
intelligence necessary to eradicate idolatry and save the indigenous people o f N ew Spain.
46 Joaquin G. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 327. A s this author summarizes. Fray Bernardino’s last name appears to point to
descent from Portugal Or Galicia.
47 Joaquin G. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 327n5. Original wording: “Sahagun habia tornado el hdbito antes de 1529 en el
convento de Salamanca, perteneciente a la composteland.”
48 Fray Bemardmo de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 385 column I.
20
Sahagun “arrived in N ew Spain in 1529 at the age o f twenty-nine, or thirty, five
years after the first group o f Franciscan ‘apostles’ made their way across the ocean.”49
Convinced as he was upon arrival o f the veracity o f the claims made by Motolinia,50 and
the other members o f the Twelve, that the indigenous people had been successfully
converted, the Franciscan concentrated on the indoctrination o f the native population.
Sahagun wrote that his main focus was the teaching o f “the articles o f faith and the seven
sacraments o f the Church.”51 To achieve proper indoctrinations, based on mutual, and
thorough understanding, Sahagun’s early “missionary work [became...] primarily
linguistic.”5^ He composed devotional works such as E l Santoral (1540, corrected and
expanded in 1563), and a Nahuatl collection o f sermons, now lost (1,540), and the
Sermonario (1548). Writings o f this type served the Franciscans’ needs for building o f the
N ew Church amongst the Nahua. These materials were fundamental, for Sahagun and
other Franciscans, to the missionary effort because they provided the vehicle to reach the
largest possible indigenous audience. The composition o f doctrinal work continued
throughout Fr. Bernardino’s life, well into his later years: The Psalmodia Christiana, “the*301
49 Walden Browne. ‘W hen Worlds Collide: Crisis in Sahagun’s Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva Espana.”
ColonialLatinAmericanHistoricalReview. Spring 1996. 101-149. P. 101.
30 This was Fray Toribio de Benavente’s Indian name. In his Historia de Ios Indios de Nueva Espana, Fray Toribio
explained that he took the name after his arrival. H e noticed that the indigenous people kept looking at the friars
and repeated the v /o ti Motolinia. “Upon being told that it meant poor, and that the Indians were commenting on
the Franciscans’ bare feet and patched and threadbare habits, he at once declared that because it was the first
Nahuatl word that he had learned (and undoubtedly also because o f its meaning) it should thereafter be his name.”
Life and Works o f Fray Toribio Motolinia. Elizabeth Andros Foster, Trans, and Ed. Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood Press Publishers, 1977. P. 2.
31FrayBem ardinodeSahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 382 column 2. Original wording: “[L]as
articulos d e f e y d e Ios siete sacramentos de la Iglesian
52 Munro S. Edmonson, 1974. P. 3.
'
21
only work to be printed in his lifetime,”53 was dated 1583, when Sahagun was in his early
eighties.54
Sahagun’s other major preoccupation was his work as a faculty member at the
Colegio Imperial de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco.55 As a man educated at the University o f
Salamanca (1512-1514), he was able to use his preparation to aid in the foundation, and
subsequent work o f the Colegio. He became one o f the few select teachers o f that
college. Sahagun wrote with apparent pride about the beginnings o f the school:
After w e came to this land to implant the Faith, w e assembled the
boys in our houses, as is said. And w e began to teach them to read, write,
and sing. And, as they did well in this, w e then endeavored to put them to
the study o f grammar. For this training a college was formed in the city o f
M exico, in the Santiago Tlatilulco section, in which [college] were selected
from all the neighboring villages and from all the provinces the most
53 John W. Keber. Sahagun’s Psalmodia: Christian Love and Domination in Sixteenth CenturyMexico. In Eloisa
Qinones Keber, 1994. 45-64. P. 47.
54 In 1983, highly respected scholar o f Sahagun Arthur I O. Anderson wrote: “These Nahuatl writings o f Sahagun
were a part o f the body o f devotional works that such missionaries as Sahagun, Olmos, Motolinia, Mendieta, and
probably most o f the regular clergy then in N ew Spain considered essential for the effective conversion o f recently
[Christianized] or still pagan populations then and for a long time to come speaking their native languages. During
the two decades between 1560 and 1580 Sahagun succeeded in writing or compiling a great deal o f such material
before the ecclesiastical and crown policies that had at first encouraged such activities in the end stifled them.”
“Sahagun’s Doctrinal Encyclopaedia” Estudios de Cultura Ndhuatl. Universidad Nacional Autonoma de M exico.
Vol. 16,1983. 109-122. P. HO.
55 A s faculty, he spent three periods o f his life in the school: First from the foundation in 1536 to 1540, after which
time he took a leave o f absence to do missionary work. Second, from 1545 to 1558, after which period he left to do
field research in Tepepulco until 1561, and finally, from 1571 to his final illness in 1589. He made his final
journey to the infirmary o f San Francisco were he died on February 5th., 1590, at the late age o f ninety (plus)
years. This information comes from a combination o f data found in both: Walden Browne. “When Worlds Collide:
Crisis in Sahagun’s Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva Espana.” Colonial Latin American Historical
Review. Spring 1996. 101-149. AndM iguelLedn-Portilla. “Sahagun’s Early Years in Tlatelolco.” Chipping
Awav on Earth: Studies in Prehispanic and Colonial M exico in Honor o f Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E.
Dibble. Eloise Qinones Keber, Edt. Lancaster: Labyrinthos, 1994. 13-20. For more biographical information
consult Luis Nicolau d’Olwer’s Fray Bernardino de Sahaguru 1499-1590. Mauricio J. M ixco, Trans. Salt Lake
City: University o f Utah Press, 1987, and Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta’s Bibliosrafia Mexicana del Sizlo XVI:
Catdlozo Razonado de Libros Imvresos en Mexico de 1539 a 1600. Agustin Millares Carlo, Ed. Mexico: Fondo
d e CulturaEcondmica, 1954. P .327-387.
22
capable boys, best able to read and write. They slept and ate in the same
college without leaving it, except few times.56578
The Colegio served to educate mostly the children o f the indigenous elite, much
like the pre-Hispanic Calmecac7 creating an illusion, in both sides o f the exchange, o f
something in common, while in reality the Calmecac and the Colegio were fully different
institutions: The first served to educate the young Nahua elite, and provide a continuation
o f the Nahua ways from within the context o f their cosmology, and the second served the
Spanish and more specifically the Franciscan’s acculturation and indoctrination purposes.
It was a case o f double-mistaken-identity. Here, taking the place o f the Ilamacazque,51
Fr. Bernardino instructed “a select group o f Aztec nobility, whose skill-som e could
compose hexameters-astounded and stirred jealousy among many who aspire such
feats.”38 Sahagun was also doing his ruler’s work. In fact, in 1573, King Philip II made
the role o f schools for the indigenous people in the Americas all too clear: “Even though
they seem to be pacified and ask for a teacher, be careful, asking first that they send their
56 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume H. Book X. RelaciondelAutorD ignadeSerN otada.
P. 165. Original wording: “Luego que venimos a esta tierra a plantar la fejuntamos (a) Ios muchachos en
nuestras casas, como esta dicho, y Ies comenzamos (a ensenar) a leery escribiry cantar, y como salieron bien con
esto, procuramos luego deponerlos en el estudio de la Gramdtica, para el cual ejercicio se hizo un Colegio en la
ciudad de Mexico en laparte de Santiago del Tlatilulco, en el cual de todos lospueblos comarcanos y de todas las
provincias se escogieron. Ios muchachos mas hdbiles, y que mejor sabian leery escribir, Ios cuales dormiany
comian en el mismo Colegio sin salirfuera sinopocas veces.”
57 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoridGeneraL Garibay, 1956. Volume I. Book HI. Chapter V D l P .3 0 5 .
Tlamacazque or Indigenous Ministers.
58 John W. Keber. In Eloise Quinones Keber, 1994. P. 47. Fray Bemardhio de Sahagtin expressed his sentiments o f
pride in his students in the Relacidn del Autor, digna de ser notada. Volume HI. Book X. P. 165-166.
23
children to be taught— these will serve as hostages— and urging them to build churches
' first where ministers may go and teach and preach.”59
Sahagun was a well-loved professor. His students would eventually become his
assistants in the process o f gathering and translating the ethnographic information that
served as the basis for the Florentine Codex and the Historia General.
And in all this scrutiny, [making reference to the field research]
there were grammarians from the College. The principal and wisest was
Antonio Valeriano, from the neighborhood o f Azcapotzalco; another one,
not much lesser than he was Alonso Vegerano from the neighborhood o f
Cuauhtitlan; another was Martin Jacovita, whom I mentioned above.
Another was Pedro de San Buenaventura, from Cuauhtitlan; All were
experts in three languages, Latin, Spanish, and Indian. The scribes that
produced all the work in good print are Diego de Grado neighbor o f
Tlatelolco, from the quarter o f Concepcion; Bonifacio Maximiliano, from
Tlatelolco, from the quarter o f San Martin; Mateo Severino, from
Xochimilco, o f the part o f Utlac.60
Fray Bernardino’s biographer, late nineteenth century Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta,
illustrated the close nature o f the teacher-students relationship when he quoted Father
Mendieta, Sahagun’s contemporary. Mendieta recorded that at the end o f Fray
Bernardino’s life, before the Friar left the convent in Tlatelolco to go to the infirmary at
the convent o f San Francisco de M exico, Fray Bernardino. “He had his children, the
59 King Philip H. July 13, 1573. From the ^Recopilacion de Leyes de Ios Reinos de las Indias, Libro I, titulo I, ley
4.” Quoted in Charles S. Branden. Religious Aspects o f the Conquest o f M exico. Durham, North Carolina: Duke
University Press, 1930. P. 198.
60 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Garibay, 1956. Volume I. Book n. Prologue. P .1 0 7 . Sahagun
has mentioned Martin Jacovita one page earlier and credited him with being “el que mas trabajo de todos Ios
colegiales. ” (He who worked more that all the other students). Original wording: “[¥ ]
todos estos escrutinios
[making reference to the field research] hubo gramdticos colegiales. Elprincipal y mas sabio fu e Antonio
Valeriano, vecino de Azcapotzalco; otro, poco menos que este, fue Alonso Vegerano vecino de Cuauhtitlan; otro
fue Martin Jacovita, de que arriba hice mencion. Otro Pedro de San Buenaventura, vecino de Cuauhtitlan; todos
expertos en tres lenguas, latina, espanola, e Indiana. Los escribanos que sacaron de buena letras todas las obras
son Diego de Grado vecino de Tlatelolco, del barrio de la Concepcion; Bonifacio Maximiliano, vecino de
Tlatelolco, del barrio de San Martin; Mateo Severino, vecino de Xochimilco, de la parte de Utlac. ”
24
Indians raised at the school, brought to him, and after saying good-bye, he was taken to
M exico, where after devoutly receiving all the sacraments, [...] he died and there he is
buried.”61
The early period o f Sahagurfs life in N ew Spain was a formative period where the
Friar defined his role in the foundation o f the N ew Church. In 1994, Miguel Ledn-Portilla
wrote that during Fray Bernardino’s stays at the Colegio, “besides acting as a teacher and
missionary, he developed the most cherished concern o f his life-that o f learning about the
culture and history o f the Nahua people o f M exico.”62 This statement by itself, although
part o f the truth, is deceivingly incomplete. During this time Sahagun had a painful
realization. Those first Franciscans, including Motolinia, had euphorically boasted that
“the religious conversion o f the indigenous population had been both profound and
complete.”63 Motolinia said: “Because where the doctrine and the word o f Christ has
arrived, nothing [o f idolatry] remains that is known nor that needs to be taken into
account.”64 He went on to categorically defend what seemed as indigenous idolatrous
practices, such as the making o f idols, as necessary responses o f the Indians to placate the
61 Mendieta quoted by Joaquin Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 333 column 1-2. From Mendieta’s Historia, Lib. V, pte. I, cap.
41. Original wording:
traer ante si a sus hijos Ios indios que criaba en el colegio, y despidiendose de
ellos, fu e llevado a Mexico, donde acabando de recivir devotamente todos Ios sacramentos [...] murioy estd alii
enterrado.”
62 M iguel Leon-Portilla. Eloise Quinones Keber, 1994. P. 14. In reference to Sahagun’s “two w ell defined stays [at
the Colegio]: 1536-1540 and 1545-1558.”
63 Walden Browne, 1996. P. 103.
64 Fray Toribio de Benavente or Motolinia. Historia de Ios Indios de la Nueva EspaHa. Georges Baudot, Ed.
Madrid: Clasicos Castalia, 1985. P .2 5 4 . Quoted in Walden Browne. “When Worlds Collide: Crisis in
Sahagun’s Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva Espana.” Colonial Latin American Historical Review.
Spring 1996. 101-149. P .1 0 3 . Original wording was included: “Porque adonde ha llegado la palabra y
doctrina de Cristo no ha quedado cosa [de la idolatria] que se sepa ni de que se deba hacer cuenta.”
25
Spaniards’ greed.65
It seemed, by the confident statements made by those first
Franciscans that they were convinced o f their success, and that the millenarian dream was
well in its way to becoming a reality at the time o f Sahagun’s arrival. Sahagun’s
experience told him a very different story. Those first ‘gleamy-eyed’ claims were more
than a little political and self-congratulatory. Fr. Bernardino’s feelings, on the matter are
so intense he even questioned his God vehemently:
What is this, Lord? You have permitted for so long that the enemy
o f human kind rule, at his pleasure, without resistance, over this sad and
forsaken nation, where with such liberty he poured all his grime and
darkness! Lord, this injury is not only yours, but o f all human kind. For
that share which is mine, I beg you that after taking the power from the
enemy, you grant abundance o f grace where once was so much
wrongdoing, and as there was such an abundance o f darkness, that there
will be an abundance o f light over these peoples, which you have, for so
long, permitted to be subjugated and oppressed under such tyranny!66
From this moment o f realization grew an intense pessimism and belief that the
Nahua people were playing out an exercise in deceit: “Having set forth these two great
inconveniences in the founding o f this new Church, it is a clear thing that all is false, [...] in
their hearts they don’t stop having their gods as gods, nor rendering them occult service,
offerings, and celebrations, in which account this affair suffers by being secret.”67
65 Walden Browne, 1996. P. 103.
66Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Garibay, 1956. Volume I. Book I. Exclamaciones Del Autor.
P. 95. Original wording: “jQue es esto, senorDios, que habeis permitido, tantos tiempos, que aquel enemigo del
genero humano tan a su gusto se enseiiorease de esta tristey desamparada nacidn, sin que nadie Ie resistiese,
donde con tanta Hbertad derramo toda su pozon a y todas sus tinieblas! jSenorDios, esta injuria no solamente es
vuestra, pero tambien de todo el genero humano, y p o r la parte que me toca suplico a V.D. Majestad que despiies
de haber quitado todo el poder al tirano enemigo, hagais que donde abundo el delito abunde la gracia, y conforme
a la abundancia de las tinieblas venga la abundancia de la luz, sobre esta gente, que tantos tiempos habeis
permitido estar supeditaday opresa de tan grande Urania!”
67 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. “Arte A d iv in a to r ia In Joaquin Garcra Icazbalceta. Bibliosrafia mexicana del sizlo
XVI. Agustin Millares Carlo, Edt. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1981. 376-387. P. 383. Original
wording: “Habiendo precedido estos dos inconvenientes tan grandes en el fundamento de esta nueva Iglesia, es
26
Sahagun felt, at one time, conflicting feelings for the Nahuas.68 The Friar did not
understand that the indigenous reactions to the initial conversions were the result o f their
pre-existing modes o f understanding o f the universe.69 Still, his sense o f deception co­
existed with a deep level o f love and admiration for aspects o f the indigenous culture.
Sahagun became ill during an outbreak o f plague in 1542: “Where in all this N ew
Spain died the greater part o f the people who lived there, and I found m yself in the time o f
this plague (pestilence) in this city o f Mexico, in the part o f Tlatilulco, and I buried more
than ten thousand bodies, and at the end o f the plague I became ill and almost died (was
near the end).”70 While Sahagun recovered, he heard some Native elders pray. When he
heard those “words which truly issued from their hearts when they spoke,”71 the. Friar
could not but “admire [...] the force and wisdom o f that Ancient word.”72 Upon that
basic contradiction, between admiration and distrust, Sahagun built the great purpose o f
cosa clam que todo esta falso,..., en Io interior no dejan de tener a sus dioses pordioses, ni de hacerles servicio,
ofrendas y fiestas en Io oculto, en cuanto sufre el sersecreto este negocioT
68 “[His] work was driven by a sense o f crisis...determined by his inability to reconcile a pre-existing, and ostensibly
complete, medieval world view with his increasing awareness o f the complexity o f the world o f the Nahuas.”
Walden Browne, 1996. P. 102.
69 “Sahagun w as haunted by his discovery o f an internal Nahua psyche that did not coalesce with outward
demonstrations o f Christianity and from this he assumed that everything about their conversion must have been
false.” Walden Browne, 1996. P. 104.
70 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Codice florentino. Book XI:238r. A s quoted in Browne, p. 115. Original wording:
“\D\onde en toda esta Nueva Espaiia murid la mayor parte de esta gente que en ella via: y y o me alle en el tiempo
desta pestilencia en esta ciudad de mexico en la parte de tlatilulco y enterre mas de diez mill cuerpos: y al cabo
dela pestilencia diome ami la enfermidad, y estube muy al cabo.”
71 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Codice florentino. Book VI: 1969:1; 1979:2. Fol.lr. A squotedinLeon-Portilla.
“Sahagun Early Years in Tlatelolco.” P .1 5 . Original wording: “Palabras que verdaderamente sallan de sus
corazones cuando hablablan.”
72MiguelLeon-Portilla.
antiguo.”
In Eloise Quinones Keber, 1994. P .1 5 . “Admirar lafuerzay sabiduria de ese mundo
27
his life, to gather, translate and compose a twelve book encyclopedia on the Nahua and
their world.73
It was sometime in the early 1540’s that Fray Toribio de Benavente, commonly
known by his adopted Indian name, Motolinia, gave the initial charge to Sahagun to
collect the information that eventually grew into Fr. Bernardino’s compendium: The
Florentine Codex, and its Spanish version, the icHistoria General de las Cosas de Nueva
Espana ” Later, in 1557, Father Francisco de Toral formally reiterated his charge. “As
Mexican Provincial he [Toral] had taken the hard decision to aid Fray Bernardino de
Sahagun in the compilation o f his great work on the religion and society o f the Aztecs o f
M exico.”74 Sahagun wrote o f this charge, which in fact constituted the formal reason for
his work, his Franciscan vow o f obedience: “Under mandate o f the Reverend Father Fray
Francisco Toral, Provincial o f the Holy Gospel, and later Bishop o f Campeche and
Yucatan, I wrote twelve books o f the divine things, better called idolatrous, and human
and natural things o f the natives o f this N ew Spain,”75 and later: cT was ordered through
73 “The Florentine Codex, the work o f Fray Bernardino de Sahagun and o f learned Nahuas, is made up o f twelve
books gathered in three volumes. The whole consists o f about 2,466 pages. The general structure o f the work is
quite regular. Each page is divided into two columns. The Nahuatl text, written first, is on the right half, while
the Spanish text and the illustrations, which were drawn last, are on the left. The only exceptions to this pattern
are the title page, the prologues, the admonitions, and the summaries, which generally all occur at the beginning o f
each book.” Quoted from Marc Thouvenot. “Sahagun and the Florentine Codex: A n Example o f the NonDiscovery o f Aztec Writing.” Chipping Away on Earth: Studies in Prehispanic and Colonial Mexico in Honor o f
Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. Eloise Qinones Keber, Edt. Lancaster: Labyrinthos, 1994. 21-28.
P. 21.
74 Inga Clendinnen. Ambivalent Conquests: Mava and Spaniard in Yucatan. 1517-1570. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987. P. 85.
75Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Garibay, 1956. Volume I. Book I. Prologue. Pg. 28. Original
wording: “[P]or mandate del muy Reverendo Padre el P. Fray Francisco Toral, provincial de esta Provincia del
Santo Evangelic, y despues Obispo de Campechey Yucatan, escribi doce libros de las cosas divinas, o p o r mejor
decir idoldtricas, y humanasy naturales de esta Nueva EspahaP
28
holy obedience to my prelate superior, to write in the Mexican language what I considered
useful for the indoctrination, acculturation, and maintenance o f the natives o f N ew Spain,
and to help the workers and ministers that teach them.”76
Building the compendium proved to be a formidable task. Besides the usual
difficulties that most scholars must endure during field research, such as traveling long
distances, and finding reliable informants, there was the huge scope o f the work. Sahagun
demonstrated tireless tenacity in a variety o f ways which reflect the fact that the
significance o f the compendium was unquestionable for the Friar. During the epidemic o f
1545, not only tens o f thousands o f indigenous people died, but Fray Bernardino himself
became gravely ill (1546) 77 A second epidemic hit in 1576 devastating the indigenous
population once more: “Due to which there is no one left at the school. Almost all have
left dead and sick.”78
The Franciscan also faced hostilities from his own religious superiors. In 1570,
Father Escalona ordered the dispersion o f Sahagun’s work throughout N ew Spain and
stopped its funding. Escalona’s intention was to punish Sahagun. The reasons are
complex, and the source o f arguments amongst scholars.79 Fr. Bernardino complained in
76 Fray Bernardinod e Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Garibay, 1956. V o lu m e! BookII. Prologue. P. 105. Original
wording: “[A] mi mefue mandada p o r santa obediencia de mi prelado mayor, que escribiese en lengua mexicana
Io que me pareciese ser util para la doctrina, cultura y manutencia de Iq cristianidad de estos naturales de esta
Nueva Espana, y p a r a ayuda de Ios obreros y ministros que Ios doctrinan.”
77 Joaquin Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 330.
78FrayBem ardinodeSahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume m . Book X. Relacion del A u to,rdignade ser notada.
P. 167. Original wording: “[Q]«e asi no estdya nadie en el Colegio, muertosy enferinds casi todos son salidos.”
79 Icazbalceta, in the late nineteenth century, postulated that Escalona’s attitude towards the Franciscan vow o f
poverty was such that it led him to view Sahagun’s work as a wasteful exercise: Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, 1954.
P. 372-373.
29
his Historia that after the cutting o f funding he was put in the position to write everything
by his own hand. Sahagun was then in his early seventies and his writing had become
tremulous due to his age, and age related illness. The lack o f funds meant that he could
not hire scribes to aid him in the task o f transcribing the information he had compiled.
Sahagun complained that because “some o f the Definitors thought it was against the vow
o f poverty to spend money on writing”80 his works, and since his hands trembled (he was
then over seventy years old) there was no progress in his work for five years. Also, in the
prologue to B ook I he commented, somewhat bitterly:
These twelve books, with the art and vocabulary Appendix, were
put on paper in this year o f 1569. They have not been written in prose yet,
nor have the notes been added, as it was the original goal o f this work; I do
not know what it will be accomplished in the coming year o f the seventieth
decade, sine from the year mentioned [1569] to almost the end o f 1575,
nothing more could be accomplished in this work because o f the great
disfavor received from those that should have supported it.81
Escalona’s decision to disperse Fray Bernardino’s work might have also been a
response to Sahagun’s insubordination. Sahagun sent his Breve Compendio, a brief
summary o f his work, directly to the Pope, and his Sumario or summary o f that same
work to Spain:
80 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book II. Prologue. P. 107. Original wording:
“Algunos de Ios definidores Ies pareclo que era contra la pobreza gastar dineros en escribirse aquellas escrituras,
y asi mandaron al autor que despidiese a Ios escribanosy que el solo escribiese de su mano Io que quisiere en
ellas. El cual, como era mayor de setenta an osy p o r temblor de la mano no pudo escribir nada ni sepudo
alcanzar dispensacion de este mandamiento, estuvieron las escrituras sin hacer nada en ellas mas de cinco anos.”
81 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I Prologue. Pg 28. Original wording: “Estos
doce libros, con el a rte y vocabulario Apendice, se acabaron de sacar en bianco este ano de mil quinientosy
sesenta y nueve. Aun no se hapodido romanzar, ni poner Ios escolios segun la traza de la obra; no se Io que se
podria hacer en el ano de setenta que se sigue, pues desde el dicho ano, hasta casi el fin de este ano de mil
quinientosy setenta y cinco no se pudo mas entender en esta obra, p o r el gran desfavor que hubo departe de Ios
que la debieron de favorecer.”
30
In that time the author made a summary o f all the books and o f all
the chapters in all the books, and the prologues, where briefly the content
o f each book was introduced. The summaiy was taken to Spain by the
father Fray M gu el Navarro and his companion father Fray Geronimo de
Mendieta. In this way all that was written about the things o f this land got
to Spain.82
Fray Bernardino’s actions called for Escalona’s punitive response. Fray Bernardino had
plenty o f opportunity to demostrate his persistent, and rather stubborn nature. His loss o f
support might have also been due to the sharp statements that he aimed particularly at
Motolinia. Motolinia had died only a year earlier. His death was recent in the minds o f
many who loved, respected, and admired this member o f the first apostles to the Americas.
Fr. Bernardino’s timing was most “inoportuncT (untimely).83
The 1577 royal ruling o f confiscation left Fr. Bernardino “stripped o f the most
complete texts o f his General History.”84 Soon after, Fr. Bernardino became tangled in
the middle o f the Seraphic conflicts (1584-1587). On the twenty-ninth o f June o f 1585,
the Franciscan chapter chose Fray Bernardino as first definitor. The Friar renounced the
position soon after Fray Ponce ordered him to follow the Franciscan constitution and
govern the province as Commissary General, and after the Viceroy asked him for his
credentials.85 The difficulty for Sahagun was not a weakness o f spirit, as the late
82 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book E. Prologue. P .1 0 7 . Original wording: “En
este tiernpo el autor hizo un sumario de todos Ios lib ro sy de todos Ios capitulos de cada libro, y Ios prdlogos,
donde en brevedad se decia todo Io que se contenia en Ios libros; (y) este sumario llevaron a Espana el padre fra y
Miguel N avarroy su companero el padre fray Geronimo de Mendieta. Y asi se puso en Espana Io que estaba
escrito acerca de las cosas de esta tierra.”
83 Joaquin Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 373 column 2.
84 George Baudot. In Edmonson, 1974. P. 165.
85 George Baudot, 1974. P. 166-167.
31
nineteenth century biographer Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta suggested,8687but the simple fact
that his support rested with Fray Pedro de San Sebastian. Sahagun not only rejected Fray
Ponce openly, but also signed his name with other Franciscans to a series o f complaint
letters to the Audienciail It was also in 1585 that Fray Bernardino felt compelled to
rescue his work, mostly from memory, and to write his ^Calendario mexicano, latino, y
castellanoC the iA rte AdivinatoriaC the iiLibro de la ConquistaC and his iiVocabulario
Trilingiie ” It was indeed a busy year for the good father. His persistent, even desperate
attempts to expose idolatry tell o f Sahagun’s growing fears. In the face o f peninsular
oblivious attitude towards what he perceived as the deeply rooted nature o f idolatrous
practices among the indigenous population, the Messianic dream was dying, or was at
least in grave danger. Sahagun spent his later years in a untiring attempt to rescue his
dream. Also in 1585, “voices [including Sahagun’s] were raised at the Third Mexican
Council to demand the prohibition o f depicting devils and animals alongside the saints, for
the Indians adored them as before”88
The N ew Spain Tribunal o f the Inquisition, on December 19, 1587,
excommunicated all the Definitors, o f which Sahagun was one ...[for refusing to recognize
Fray Alonso Ponce as Commissary General (May 16, 1587) and ...] introducing] suit
86 Joaquin G. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 332 column 2 and 333 column I. “A la verdad no nos hallamos con dnimopara
condenar severamente en el anciano religioso una flaqueza muy disculpabley redimida de antemano con tantas
virtudesy tan largos anos de eminente servicio.”
87 In these letters, brought to light by scholar Georges Baudot in 1974, Sahagtin and the others requested that the
Crown intervene, and protect the friars from Father Ponce. George Baudot. In Munro S. Edmonson, Ed., 1974. P.
165-187. The four letters can be found in pages 172-176.
88 Serge Gruzinski. The Conquest o f Mexico: The Incorporation o f Indian Societies into the Western World. 16th18th Centuries. Eileen Corrigan, Trans. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993. P .1 8 7 .
32
before the Audiencia against Father Ponce’s legitimacy as commissary general.”89
Sahagun was then in his late eighties, still working, and still fighting for what he, so
vehemently believed: The providential nature o f the conquest justified the Franciscans’
dream to established the N ew Church in the Americas. The success o f this mission
depended on a true eradication o f idolatry. Such eradication could only be accomplished
if the Nahua culture was fully understood. Sahagun aimed to illuminate and eradicate
every minute detail that could harbor idolatrous practices. Then, and only then, with
Nahuatl as its language, the N ew Church would be ready for the second coming o f Christ;
At least this was Sahagun’s solution to the grave lack o f prudencia (prudence),90 and
“culpable ignorancia” (culpable ignorance)91 o f the Twelve.
Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva Espafia
Sahagun’s Historia is a work o f encyclopedic magnitude. It consists o f twelve
books that form, from within the limitations o f the Franciscan’s understanding, interests,
and pre-existing categorical assumptions, a compendium on indigenous matters. Fray
Bernardino’s compendium is commonly known in historiography as the Historia General
89 George Baudot. The Last Years ofFray Bernardino de Sahagun (1585-90): The Rescue o f the Confiscated Work
and the Seraphic Conflicts. New Unpublished Documents. Sixteenth Century Mexico: Tlie Work o f Sahagun.
Munro S. Edmonson, Ed. Albuquerque: U n iversityofN ew M exico Press, 1974. 165-187. P .1 6 7 . Baudot goes
on to explain that the excommunication was somewhat academic since, in his words, “Fray Bernardino did not
leave his office as Definitor until the new Chapter was celebrated on January 29, 1589.” P. 167.
90 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun blames the Twelve’s failure in the veracity o f their conversions o f the indigenous
people on their lack o f prudence. ArteAdivinatoria. Ihlcazbalceta, 1954. P. 382. column 2. See also this work’s
section titled SahagAn and the Messianic Dream. SilverMoon. M asterThesis, 1999. Chapter 4.
91 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book IV. Apendice D el Cuarto Libro, En Romance, Y
Es Una Apologia En Defension D e La Verdad Que En E l Se Contiene. P. 371.
de las Cosas de Nueva Espana?2 That was not the Friar’s intended title. In 1829-1830,
Carlos Bustamante Garcia published an edition o f the Historia based on the Manuscrito
de Tolosa. The title page was damaged and so the work received its title from a “careless
appendage to Sahagun’s work”9293 made by the manuscript’s scribe: “End o f the General
History written by the Very Reverend Father, fray Bernardino de Sahagun.”94 Sahagun’s
chosen title was: Historia Universal de las Cosas de la Nueva Espana?5 The difference
is o f consequence in that it gives the reader a clue to the Friar’s framework. Whereas the
word General creates an impression o f a survey study, the word Universal is defined in
Spanish as “valid in a total and imperative manner.”96 This definition gives the
compendium a totalizing quality. However, the Historia is neither general nor universal.
It is a collection o f the indigenous information that Sahagun, and the Nahua participants,
following their own interests, saw fit to record. Sahagun claimed to focus on the
indigenous people o f N ew Spain. However, the work was composed in three very specific
areas: Tepepulco, Mexico-Tlatelolco, and Mexico-Tenochtitlan. The information was
also gathered from very specific indigenous social strata. It was compiled from those left
in the areas mentioned above holding elite positions.
92 Following the title o f the source used, Angel Maria Garibay’s 1956 edition, this study has used the title Historia
General for the sake o f maintaining consistency with that source.
93 Walden Browne, 1996. P. 121.
94 W aldenBrowne, 1996. P. 121 and 121n50.
95 Walden Browne, 1996. P. 121n52.
96 Ramon Garda Pelayo y Gross. Pequeno Larousse Hustrado. M arsella and Mexico: Ediciones Laroussei 1988. P.
1042. Original wording: “Vdlido de una mariera total e imperativa.”
34
The twelve books treated issues that ranged from the Gods and religious
practices,97 to various aspects o f the natural world (Refer to Table I). Sahagun explained
the order o f subjects in the prologue to B ook IX:
The first order followed in the history is that initially, and in the
firsts books, the gods and their celebrations, their sacrifices, and their
temples, and all that concerned their service, were addressed, and o f these
things were composed the firsts five books; and o f them, the last and fifth
book addressed the divining arts and supernatural things; [...] B ook six
discusses the rhetoric and moral philosophy that these natives reached. In
it there are many kinds o f prayers, very elegant and moral, and even those
about their gods and their ceremonies, which can be said are very
theological. In this same book is discussed the esteem in which the
speakers and those who used rhetoric were held. Next, the work discusses
natural things, in the seventh book; and then the lords, kings and
governors, and principal people; and then the merchants, and after, the
lords captains, and strong men, who were held in the greatest esteem o f
any in the republic, and who are discussed in book eight. And after them,
book nine discusses the feather and gold craftsmen, and those o f precious
stones. And the qualities, conditions, and forms o f all the crafts and people
are discussed in book ten, and there also are discussed the parts o f the
body, illnesses and medicines against them, and also the differences and
diversities o f all the generations o f people that inhabit this land, and their
conditions. In the eleventh book are treated the animals, birds, plants, and
trees. In the twelfth, the wars fought when this land was conquered, as a
horrible thing, contrary to human nature, are discussed.98
97 N ote that the categories used throughout Sahagun’s work are the author’s. The assumed divisions between
religious and secular, God(s) and humans, for the Nahua world, and for that o f Sahagtin’s, were completely
different and irreconcilable. Sahagun could only examine the indigenous experience by making it his own, hence
forever altering it, and its meanings through his translation.
98 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume IE. Book IX. Prologue. P .1 3 . See table I. Original
wording: “La primera orden que se ha tenido en esta historia es queprimeramentey en losprimeros libros se tratd
de Ios diosesy de sus fiestas, y de sus sacrificios, y de sus templos, y de todo Io concemiente a su servicio, y de
esto se escribieron Ios primeros cinco libros; y de ellos el postrero fue el quinto, que trata de la arte adivinatoria
y que tambien habla de las cosas sobrenaturales; [...] El sexto libro trata de la RetdricayFilosofiaM oral que
estos naturales alcanzaron, donde se ponen muchas maneras de oraciones, muy elegantes y morales, y dun las que
tocan a sus diosesy a sus ceremonias sepueden decir muy teologales. En este mismo libro se trata de la
estimacion en que se tenia Ios retdricosy oradores; despues de esto se trata de las cosas Naturales, y esto en el
septimo libro. Y luego de Ios senores, reyes y gobemadores, y pricipales personas; y luego de Ios mercaderes, y
despues de Ios senores capitanes y hombres fuertes, que son Ios mas tenidos en la republica, de Ios cuales se trata
en el octavo libro. 7 tras ellos Ios oficiales de p lu m a yd e oro, y de piedras preciosas; de estos se trata en el
noveno libro. Y las calidades, condicionesy maneras de todos Ios oficiales y personas, se trata en el libro
decimo, donde tambien se trata de Ios miembros corporalesy de las enfermedades, y medicinas contrarias, y
35
B ook I
B ook 2
B ook 3
Full Title
En que se trata de Ios dioses que
adoraban Ios n aturales de esta tierra
que es la N ueva Espaha
C om position
C arta D edicatoria, Prologo',
A l Sincero Lector,
C hapters I-XXII; Apendice',
Confutacidn; A l L ector
Subject M a tter
Que trata del Calendario, fie s ta s y
cerem onias, sacrificios y solem nidades
que estos n aturales de esta N ueva
E spaha haclan a honra de sus dioses
Prologo', Chapters I-X IX ; D e
las fie sta m ovibles; C hapters
Rituals:
Calendar,
X X -X X X V III; S ix appen d ices
to B ook One; Sacerdotisas
C elebrations an d
C erem onies
D el prin cipio que tuvieron Ios D ioses
Prologo', Chapter I-X1V; N in e
O rigin s o f the
G ods
C hapter A ppendices
G ods and
G oddesses
B ook 4
D e la A strologia ju d ic ia ria o arte de
adivinar que estos m exicanos usaban
p a ra sab er cu ales d ias eran bien
afortunados y cu ales m al afortunados
y que condiciones tendrian Ios que
naclan en Ios d ia s atribuidos a Ios
cardcteres o signos que aqul se ponen,
y p a re ce m as nigrom ancia que no de
A strologla
Prologo', Chapters I-XL;
A ppendix: A pologia en
defensidn de la verd a d que en
e l se contiene
Astrology: T he
Soothsayers
B ook 5
Que trata de Ios A u g iiero sy
Pronosticos, que estos naturales
tom aban de algunas aves, anim ales y
saban dijas p a ra adivinar las cosas
fu tu ras
Prologo', Chapters I-X III;
A ppendix: D e las abusiones
que usaban estos naturales
O m ens
B ook 6
D e la R etdrica y la F ilosofia m oral y
Teologla de la gen te mexicana, donde
h ay cosas m uy curiosas, tocante a Ios
prim ores de su lengua, y cosas muy
d elicadas tocante a las virtudes
m orales
Prologo', Chapters I-XLIII;
A d icio n es a l Iibro sexto:
R efrones, Adivinanzas,
M etdforas o modismos.
M oral
Philosophy,
Q ue trata de la A strologla Natural,
que alcanzaron estos naturales de esta
N ueva Espaha
Prologo', Chapters I-XIII
Astronomy:
Natural
B ook 7
T heology,
R hetoric and
Prayers
A strology
tambien de las diferencias y diversidades de generaciones de gentes que en esta tierra habitan, y de sus
condiciones. En el undecimo Iibro se trata de Ios animales, aves, yerbas, y drboles. En el Iibro duodecimo se
trata de las guerras cuando esta tierra fue conquistada, como cosa horrible y enemiga de la naturaleza humana.
36
D e Ios R e y e s y Sefiores, y de la m anera
que tenian en sus elecciones, y en e l
gobiern o de sus reinos
Prologo', C hapters I-X X I
B ook 9
D e Ios M ercaderes y O ficiales de oro,
p ie d ra s p r e c io s a s y plu m as ricas
P rologo, C hapters I-X X I;
A d icio n es a l Iibro nono:
O ficia les de oro, D e la m anera
de labrar de Ios plateros,
G em atistica, A rte Plum aria
M erchants and
A rtisans
B o o k 10
D e Ios v ic io s y virtu des de esta gente
mexicana; y de Ios m iem bros de todo
e l cuerpo in teriores y exteriores; y de
la s enferm edades y m edicinas
contrarias; y de las naciones que ban
venido a esta tierra
P rologo, Chapters I-X X V II
Relacidn d el A u to r digna de ser
notada; C hapters X X V III-
V irtues, V ices,
D isea ses
B ook 8
B o o k 11
B o o k 12
D e las p ro p ied a d es d e Ios animales,
aves, peces, drboles, hierbas, fiores,
m e ta les y piedras, y de Ios colores
Que trata de la Conquista de M exico
History,
G overnm ent,
K in gs
X X IX
C hapters I-XII; A ppendix:
A dicion sobre supersticiones
a n d D e las C alidades de Ios
cam inos; Chapter XIII
Prologo', Chapters I-XLI
(D o u b le d ); R elato de la
conquista p o r un andnimo de
Tlatelolco, version d e l Ndhuatl;
R elacidn de A lva Ixtlilxdchitl
sobre la venida de Ios
Espaholes', A ppendixes: A ta vio s
e insignias de Ios D ioses, L os
Him nos de Ios Dioses, M a g o s y
Saltimbanquis', Vocavulario
T he Natural
World: A n im als,
Trees, Plants,
Flow ers, M etals
T he C onquest o f
M exico
TABLE I:
La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espafia: A Break Down. Using Angel Maria
Garibay’s Edition, 1956. In four volumes.
The original order o f the encyclopedia followed a typically Medieval hierarchical
model: It began with a study o f the divine and heavenly things, including the relationship
between humans and God(s), then moved to human subjects such as history, government.
economics, and social issues, and ended on a final, and lowest level that addressed the
natural world: Animals, plants, and minerals. Medieval hermeneutics did not match, neatly
or otherwise, with the indigenous form o f interpreting the universe. Faced with such
different experiences, and lacking traditional authorities to guide him, Fr. Bernardino had
to make adjustments, as the work progressed, in his attempt to force the indigenous reality
into his model. For example, Sahagun felt compelled to add B ook VI, the first composed
(1547), which treated the subject o f Mexican rhetoric, moral philosophy, and theology.
H e decided to place it after his presentation o f signs (Book V), and before his introduction
o f Natural Astrology (Book VII). “The reason is unclear; perhaps he considered that it
was necessary to situate the Nahuas’ knowledge o f philosophy and theology, expressed in
rhetoric, before the treatment o f their knowledge o f heaven as a physical entity.”99
Althnngh technically the encyclopedia should have ended with B ook XI, Sahagun
added a twelfth book in which he addressed the Conquest, from a stated indigenous
perspective:
It must be added to this that they who were conquered knew and
gave their versions o f many things which happened among them during the
war, things that those who conquered them did not know. For this reason
I do not believe that the writing o f this history, written while they were still
alive those who were in that same conquest, has been superfluous. They
gave their version, and they were principal people o f sound judgment, and
it is certain that they told the whole truth.100
99 Alfredo Lopez Austin. TheResearchMethod o f Sahagun: The Questionnaires. In Edmonson, 1974. 115-120. P.
121.
100FrayBem ardinodeSahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume IV. Book XU. Al Lector. P .2 1 . Original wording.
“Alleguese tambien a esto que Ios quefueron conquistados supieron y dieron relacidn de ntuchas cosas que
pasarbn entre ellos durante la guerra, las cuales ignoraron Ios que Ios conquistaron, p o r las cuales razones me
parece que no ha sido trabajo supetfluo el haber escrito esta historia, la cual se escribio en tiempo que eran vivos
Ios que se hallaron en la misma cohquista, y ellos dieron esta relacidn, y personas principales y de buenjuicio, y
que tiene por cierto que dijeron toda la verdad.”
38
Sahagun and the weight o f his interests and assumptions filtered and adapted the
alleged indigenous point-of-perspective. Thd Friar’s adaptations watered down the
indigenous narrative, and served as basis for the birth o f N ew World mythology as an
extension o f that o f the Old World:
It seems certain that the earthly paradise was located between the
torrid-zone and the Arctic. There our father Adam and our mother Eve
lived, I do not know for how many days, and from them the earth swelled
with people, and in this parts there were giants as those from before the
deluge, and there have been found bones and their great skeletons, not only
in N ew Spain, but also in the surrounding provinces and kingdoms.101
The Conquest and conquistadores, particularly Cortes, became Nahua Gods on the one
hand (Cortes becomes Quetzalcoatl), and the instruments o f the Christian God on the
other: ‘Tor this great and important endeavor, God decided that it would be good that the
most valorous captain D on Hernando Cortes would open the way, and that he would
overthrow the wall that fenced and protected idolatry. In his presence, and through him,
God our Lord made many miracles in the conquest o f these lands.”102
As Fr. Bernardino set out to order the Nahua world through the use o f Medieval
hermeneutics, and as he made adjustments, the indigenous reality was forever changed.103
101 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume IV. Book XE. Prdlogo del Autor. P. 17-18. Original
wording: “Parece tambien cosa cierta, que el paraiso terrendl estd entre la torrida-zonay el norte-drtico, en el
cual nuestro padre Addn y nuestra madre Eva moraron no se cuantos dias, y de dquellos dos se hinchio de gente
todo el mmdo. y en esta partes hubo gigantes de Ios de antes del diluvio, y han parecido aca huesosy toda la
armazon de su grandeza, no solo en esta Nueva Espana, pero tambien en las provinciasy reinos CircunstantesP
102 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneral. Volume IV. Book XE. Prologo del Autor. P. 18. Original
wording: “A este negocio muy grandey muy importante, tuvo nuestro senorD iospor bien de que Mciese cam inoy
derrocase el muro conque esta infidelidad estaba cercada y murada, el valentisimo capitdn D. Hernando Cortes,
en cuya presen ciaypor cuyos medios, M zoDios nuestro senormuchos milagros en la conquista de esta tierra.”
103 M odem scholar o f Sahagun, Alfredo Lopez Austin, identified four stages in the creation o f the Historia. First, a
brief plan composed o f the information gathered, early on, in Tepepulco, and generally known as Los Primeros
Memoriales. Second, a large manuscript that became eventually divided into two parts. These are known today as
39
What Sahagun narrated in his Historia was his version o f a few Nahuas’ versions. He did
not and could not have writen an actual ‘Universal’ record o f the experiences o f the
people who populated the area that the Spaniards had baptized as N ew Spain. Author
Walden Browne, in his 1996 analysis o f Sahagun’s work, explained it in the following
manner: “Sahagun stmggle[d] to fit the square peg o f Nahua culture into the round hole
o f a medieval Christian world[view].”104 The result was a work that was not-fully-here,
nor-fully-there. The huehuetlatolli, or orations o f the elders, o f which there are eightynine “scattered throughout the Madrid and Florentine codices,”105 pulled the work
towards a pre-Hispanic world-view, and Sahagun’s numerous prologues, and addresses to
the reader pulled the work firmly towards his own perspective.
The Spanish version o f the Historia was somewhat o f a late development. Late in
the life o f the Franciscan author, “[a] Spanish version o f the work was suddenly necessary
in order to defend not only Sahagun but the whole thrust o f the Franciscan missionary
effort from the Inquisition. Fray Bernardino produced the Spanish version in relative haste
in 1575-1577 and he sent it to Spain with Father Rodrigo de Sequera as its advocate.”106
the Madrid Codex o f the Royal Academy o f History, and the Madrid Codex o f the Royal Palace. Third, a
“beautiful and extensive bilingual manuscript now known as the Florentine Codex, subsequent to the Madrid
codices, the Nahuatl column o f which Sahagun must have considered definite.”103 The Spanish translation o f this
text is not a literal translation, but a version, or interpretation o f the Nahuatl. Fourth, the Memoriales con Escolios
(passages found in the Madrid Codex), where Sahagun wrote a literal translation o f some Nahuatl texts, with
explanations added. A lso, according to Austin, the first three stages correspond to “work done in Tepepulco,
Mexico-Tlatelolco, and Mexico-Tenochtitlan, respectivelyAlfredo Lopez Austin, hr Edmonson, 1974. P .1 1 8 . The
information on the four stages o f Sahagun’s work is from Lopez Austin. The Research Method o f Sahagim: The
Questionnaires. Iri Edmonson, 1974. P .115-120.
104 Walden Browne, 1996. P. 149.
105 Thelma D. Sullivan. TheRhetoricalOrations, or Huehuetlatolli, Collected by Sahagun.” h i Edmonson, 1974. P.
79.
106 Munro S. Edmonson, 1974. P. 9. Fray Bernardino spoke o f Sequera with gratitude and affection, crediting the
Commissary General with the rescue o f the Friar’s life work: “En este tiempo ninguna cosa se hizo era ellos, ni
40
F rom
D a te
M a n u scrip t
W h ereabou ts
P u b lish e d Version
T lah elo lc o
(1 5 4 2 -1 5 5 8 )
T epepulco
(1 5 5 8 -1 5 6 1 )
T laltelo lco
(1 5 6 1 -1 5 6 5 )
1547
B o ok 6 (N ah u atl)
Florentine C odex
1950-69:6
M adrid C odices
1905-8:6
(M adrid C odices)
1905-8:6
(M adrid C odices)
1905-8:6,7
(M adrid C odices)
1905-8:7,8
A cadem y, M adrid
1905-8
N ational L ibrary,
M exico
(Florentine C odex)
N one
A cadem y, M adrid
1905-8:7
V atican L ibrary, R om e
L aurentian L ibrary,
Florence
1942
W ithout
Sp.:
1950-69
N one
1560?
1561?
1563?
1564?
1565?
T en o d ititlan
(1 5 6 5 -1 5 9 0 )
1566?
1567?
1568?
1570?
157 7 ?
1580?
" 'P n m ero s M e m o ria le s ''
(N ahuatl)
“M e m o ria le s
C o m p le m e n ta rio s"
(N ahuatl)
“M e m o ria le s c o n
E sc o lio s” (N ah u atl and
S panish)
itM e m o h a le s e n Tres
C o lu m n a s'' (N ahuatl
a n d S panish)
M adrid C odices
(Spanish)
B o o k 4 (Spanish)
Prologues and
A ppendices (Spanish)
ttM e m o ria le s en
E s p a n o F (Spanish)
“B r e v e C o m p e n d ia ''
Florentine C odex
(N ahuatl, Spanish.
Illustrati(His)
M a n u sc r ito d e T olosa
(Spanish)
a) Panes C opy (1 7 9 3 )
b ) B auza C o p y (1 8 2 0 )
1585
1585
1585
1585
“A r te A d iv in a to r ia ''
(Sp a n id i)
“C a le n d a rio ” (N ahuatl,
Spanish, L atin)
“L ib r o d e la
C o n q u ista ” (N ahuatl,
Spanish)
“ V o cabulario
T rilin g u e'' (N ahuatl,
Spanish, L atin)
A cadem y, M adrid
1938
N ational L ibrary,
M exico
P ublic L ibrary, N Y
1938
N ational L ibrary,
M exico
N ational L ibrary,
M exico
L aietana L ibrary,
B arcelona ?
N o n e C om plete. P artial
1954
1918
N ew berry L ibrary,
C hicago?
1831-48
W ithout Sp.: 19506 9 :1 2
N one
TABLE 2:
Principal Manuscripts O f Sahagun’s Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espana.
(After Jimenez Moreno 1938; Nicolau D ’Olwer 1952, 1973, From Munro S. Edmonson.
Sixteenth Century Mexico: The Work o f Sahauun. Albuquerque, N.M.: University o f
N ew Mexico Press, 1974. P. 11. With minor adaptations.)
hubo quien (Ios) favoreciece, para acabar de traducir en romance, hasta que el padre Comisario general fray
Rodrigo de Sequera vino a estas partes y Ios vio, y se contentd mucho de ellos, y mandd al autor que Ios tradujese
en romance y proveyd de todo Io necesario para que se escribiesen de nuevo " Fray Bernardino de Sahagun
Volume I. Book H Prologue. P. 108.
41
The compendium constituted an attempt to create a master narrative where both
sides, the Nahua elite and Sahagun, made a bid for symbolic potency: The Nahua sought
some level o f restoration and perpetuation, and the Franciscan helped construct colonial
discourse. Both sides actively participated in the process o f defining power relations.
However, the Historia also served to create a pseudo-Nahua, a more homogenous
“collective they.”107 As impressive as the compendium was, SahagmTs inspiring agendas
reached for one version that imagined itself as the true interpretation o f indigenous
experience, and ignored the multiple sub-units o f the N ew Spain Indians: It neglected
their religious, linguistic, and cultural diversity, gender issues, age variants, social status,
individual and communal experiences, ancestral relations, and various enviromental
conditions. Sahagun was incapable o f perceiving the many categorical incompatibilities
between his representations and the indigenous perceptions. In Sahagun’s version, mainly
represented through the numerous interpolations he made, there was really only one
interpretation: His own.
Sahagun And The Arte Adivinatoria
In 1585, when Father Bernardino was already in his mid-eighties, he wrote his
Calendario mexicano, latin oy Castellano in Spanish, Nahuatl, and Latin, and then his Arte
Adivinatoria in Spanish. Both texts shared a purpose in a sense. They expressed
Sahagun’s growing frustration with the persistence o f idolatry, and even more so, with the
fact that his compatriots did not understand the seriousness o f the matter. In these texts
107
Mary Louise Pratt, 1992. P. 64.
42
Sahagun5 insistently and persistently, continued his persecution o f idolatry with ever
increasing exasperation. The Friar held on desperately to the Messianic dream that fueled
the initial stages o f the ‘conquest o f souls.’ He feared that the dream was fatally
wounded. The Calendario and the Arte Adivinatoria reflected a few Sahagunian concerns:
[H]e wanted to achieve and make public a native calendar perfectly
adjusted to the Christian model, [with] the direct objective o f the rapid
location o f the pre-Hispanic Mexican holidays in the course o f the year,
...[to then] displace and disperse [the nemontemi or unlucky days} in order
to erase their memory and their religious content.108
Sahagun believed only those who had the knowledge to locate those pre-Hispanic
celebrations from within the Christian holidays, which he deemed idolatrous, could work
to de-emphasize the Nahua calendar, and its attached worldview:
It is very necessary that all the Ministers o f this Indian work and
conversion should have this Calendar, for even though at the beginning
when those who first came to it declared and affirmed that idolatry was
totally destroyed, and assuming that such were the case, yet the devils and
especially the things o f idolatry sprout again and spread through secret
caves; and having this Calendar they will be able to know whether there are
any idolatries still alive and for this reason not only the Calendar is
necessary for the Ministers and preachers o f this new Church, but also it is
indispensable to have the Arte o f the divining sciences used by these
natives; and I have the intention o f putting it into Spanish together with this
Calendar for the same reason as mentioned above, if Our Lord provides the
opportunity for it.109
108 Georges Baudot. TheLastYears o fFrayBemardino deSahagun (1585-1590): TheRescueoftheConfiscated
Work and the Seraphic Conflicts. New Unpublished Documents. Sixteenth Century Mexico: The Work o f
Sahagun. Munro S. Edmonson, Ed. Albuquerque: University o f N ew Mexico Press, 1974. 165-187. P .1 8 3 .
109 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Calendario mexicano, latino y Castellano. MS 1628 bis: folios 96-112. Folio 105.
Biblioteca Nacional, M exico. Original wording: “Este Calendario es muy necesario que Ie tengan todos Ios
ministros de esta obra y conversion indiana, porque aunque a Ios principios, como dijeron y afirmaron Ios
primeros que vinieros a ella, que del todo fiue destndda la idolatria, y caso que asifuera, siempre Ios males y en
especial las cosas de la idolatria toman a reverdecer y pulular p o r cuevas secretas, y teniendo este Calendario
podrdn caer si hay algunas cosas idolatricas que esten aim vivas, y para este efecto no solamente es necesario
este Calendario a Ios ministros y predicadores de esta nueva Iglesia, pero tambien es menester tener el Arte de la
ciencia adivinatoria que usaban estos naturales; y tengo propdsito de ponerlo en romance junto con este
Calendario, p o r el mismo propdsito dicho arriba, si Nuestro Sehor diere oportunidad para elloT
43
The Arte Adivinatoria went further still. The tone o f the Arte was condemnatory,
even exasperated. The prologue contains a sharp critique, and accusations o f the
Twelve’s lack o f prudencia. Because o f that lack, Sahagun told the reader, the Indians
“were baptized, not like true believers as they [the Twelve] claimed but as liars who
received the faith without abandoning the false believe they had in many gods.”110 Still in
1585, Sahagun complained that the misrepresentations o f those first twelve friars, their
self-congratulatory reports misled the second group o f Franciscans:
“W e were all told (as it had been told to the Dominican fathers) that
these peoples had converted truthfully, and that they were almost all
baptized and so firm in the Cathohc faith o f the Roman Church, that there
was no need to preach against idolatry, since they had certainly abandoned
it.”111
Fr. Bernardino accused the Twelve o f creating such an impression that he, and his
companions, believed a miracle had taken place in N ew Spain. Feeling misled in this
manner, Sahagun wrote: “We abandoned the arms that w e had brought well sharpened to
battle idolatry, and following their council, and persuaded by those fathers, we began to
preach moral things about the articles o f faith and the seven sacraments o f the church.”112
Sahagun had invested, or rather miss-invested his early years in N ew Spain teaching the
110 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 382 column 2. Original wording:
“\F]ueron bautizados no como perfectos creyentes como ellos [the Twelve] mostraban, sino como fictos que
recibian aquellafe sin dejar la falsa que tenian de muchos dioses.”
111 FrayBem ardinodeSahagtm . ArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 382 column 2. Original wording: “A
todos nosfue dicho (comoya se habia dicho a Ios padres dominicos) que esta gente habia venido a Iafe tan de
veras, y estaban casi todos baptizadosy tan enteros en Iafe catolica de la Iglesia Romana, que no habia
necesidad ninguna de predicar contra la idolatria, porque la tenian dejada ellos muy de veras.”
112 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArieAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 382 column 2. Original wording:
“\P\ejamos las armas que traiamos muy afiladas para contra la idolatria, y del consejo y persuacion de estos
padres comenzamos a predicar cosas morales acerca de Ios articulos d e f e y d e Ios siete sacramentos de la
Iglesia.”
44
Catholic precepts to subjects o f false conversions. Guilt fueled Fr. Bernardino’s alarm and
his deep sense o f responsibility to reclaim the time wasted. His unguarded position was
partially responsible for the success in idolatrous matters o f the enemy o f the messianic
dream and his troops: “Devils enemies o f God and enemies o f all his creatures, and
enemies o f men [...] All are lies and fallacy from the devil Satan, enemy o f God and o f
men.”113 B y 1585, the force o f Sahagun’s writings against idolatry had grown in strength
and persisted even through Sahagun’s illnesses. The Friar desperately tried to postpone
the end o f the messianic dream “decades after most o f the missionaries, including
Motolinia had abandoned their utopian dreams for N ew Spain.”114
Ever since the writing Los Primeros Memoriales, in the early 1560’s,115 Sahagun
displayed a persistent preoccupation with the investigation o f the indigenous divining
arts. The information he gathered was, not only completely foreign to him and his
categorical assumptions, but was also particularly threatening to the Friar. Fray
Bernardino dealt with the unfamiliarity o f the matter in three ways: From a position o f
assumed superiority, he took upon the role o f inquisitor, while ignoring (perhaps not even
being aware) o f that which was beyond his grasp. In fact. Book VII (Natural Astrology),
113 Both quotes are from Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 385 column I.
Original wording: “\Ci\iablos enemigos de D io sy enemigos de todas sus criaturas, y enemigos de Ios hombres”
and again “todo eso es m entiray falsedad, que no es sinq diablo Satands, enemigo de D io s y d e Ios hombres.”
114 Walden Browne. “When Worlds Collide: Crisis in Sahagun’s Historia Universal de las Cosas de Hueva Espana.”
ColonialLatinAmericanHistoricalReview. Spring 1996. 101-149. P .1 0 6 . Motolinia, one o f the original Twelve
became the center o f Sahagun’s sharp criticisms. This in spite that it was Motolinia who initially gave Fray
Bernardino the charge to compile the ethnographic material that would later become the Florentine Codex.
115 O f these materials. Anthropologist Thelma D. Sullivan tells us in her 1974 essay, “only a minimal part was later
incorporated in the Florentine Codex.” Quoted from Thelma D. Sullivan. The Rhetorical Orations, or
Huehuetlatolli, Collected by Sahagun.” InEdmonson, 1974. P. 109nl. Los Primeros Memorialed was composed
o f the data compiled in Tepepulco between 1558-1561.
45
is, in the words o f modem scholar o f Sahagun Alfredo Lopez Austin, a “personal
failure:”116
I f Sahagun could have avoided treating this subject without
damaging the general plan o f the work, he would probably have eliminated
it [...Fr. Bernardino’s failure covering this matter..,] may be due in part to
his inexperience as a text collector, but undoubtedly he was strongly
motivated by his aversion to material he judged diabolical.117
The Franciscan translated the information that made sense to him, in terms o f the
known past. He made innumerable comparisons between the N ew World and the Old,
using Christian, Greco-Roman, Moorish, Jewish, and Spanish historical, and mythological
imagery. Sahagun compared the idolatries o f his culture’s gentile ancestors, including
Greeks and Romans. He called their beliefs in the sun, moon, stars, and other natural
elements and creatures, ridiculous. He blamed them in the Devil and stated: “So if this
happened, as w e know, among people o f such keenness and presumption, there is no
reason why any one should marvel that such things are found amongst such child like
people and so easily deceived, as the indigenous people o f N ew Spain.”118
Sahagun conceptualized the Greek and Latin cultures, to which his own related, as
superior “people o f such keenness and presumption,” while condescending, even making
116 AllBredo Lopez Austin. TheResearchMethod o f Sahagun. In Edmonson, 1974. P .1 3 5 .
117 Alfredo Lopez Austin. TheResearchMethod o f Sahagim. InEdmonson, 1974. P .134-135.
118 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneral. Volume E. Book VH. Prologue. P .2 5 5 . Original wording:
“Cuan desatinados habian sido en el conocimiento de las criaturas Ios gentiles nuestros antepasados, asi griegos
como latinos, estd muy claro p o r sus mismas escrituras, de las cuales nos consta cuan ridiculas fabidas
inventaron del s o ly de la luna, y de algunas de las estrellas, y del agua, fuego, tierra y a ire y de las otras
criaturas; y lopeor es (que) Ies atribuyeron la divinidad, y adoraron y ofrecieron, sacrificaron, y acataron como
dioses. Esto provino en parte p o r la ceguedad en que caimos p o r el pecado original, y en parte p o r la malicia, y
envejecido odio de nuestro adversaria Satands que siempre procura abatimos a cosas viles, y ridiculas, y muy
culpables. Rues asl esto paso —como sabemos— entre gente de tanta discrecion y presuncidn, no hay p o r que
nadie se maraville p o r que se hallen semejantes cosas entre esta gente tan pdrvu lay tan fa cil para ser engahadaT
46
infantilizing references to the Nahua: “This people so childlike and so easily deceived.”
Fray Bernardino also interpolated Christian idioms throughout the corpus o f his work,
converting what were fully different and unrelated experiences into common ones. His
transformation o f the indigenous ceremony for newborns into a baptism,119 or the
indigenous renewal o f a proper relationship with Tezcatlipoca into a confession are two
examples. The basis for these types o f transformations were some coincidences, such as
gestures or perceived imagery, that gave the two different ceremonies an appearance o f
sameness:
Once this was said, [the midwife] putting her wet fingers to his
mouth [the baby’s] said: Take, receive this with which you’ll need to
survive in this earth. [...] Then she touched his chest with water on her
fingers and said: Take here the celestial water, take this pure water that
washes and cleanses our heart, that takes impurities away, receive it; may
she purify and clean your heart. Then she poured water over his head [...]
it is to wash, to clean [...] I pray that she destroy all in you that is bad and
contrary which was given to you before the beginning o f the world.120
References to the CathoHc myth, from the Bible’s Genesis, about the original sin and the
cleansing baptismal waters are clear.
Tzevetan Todorov wrote, somewhat naively, in his 1982 study o f the conquest:
“Sahagun, for his part [as compared with other translator-compilers] chooses the path o f
119 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume II. Book VI. Chapter XXXVII. P .206-209.
120 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume E. Book VI, Chapter XXXVH. Pg. 207. Original
wording: “Dicho esto luego Ie d a ta a gustar del agua [la partera a la criatura], llegdndoles Ios dedos mojados a la
boca, y decla de esta manera: “toma, recibe, ve aqui con que has de vivir sobre la tierra, [...] Despues de esto
tocdbale lospechos con Ios dedos mojados en el agua, y deciale: “Cata aqui el agua celestial, cata aqui el agua
muy pura que lava y Hmpia vuestro corazon, que quita toda suciedad, recibela; tenga ella p a r Men depurificary
limpiar tu corazon. Despues de esto echdbale el agua sobre la cabeza [...] espara lavar, para limpiar. [...]
Ruego que ella destruyay aparte de ti todo Io malo y contrario que te fue dado antes d elprincipio del murido.”
47
total fidelity,”121 and again “Sahagun’s style is very different [from Duran’s or Motolinia]
[...] no value judgment, but no interpretation either.”122 This is not only improbable, but
impossible. “Total fidelity” could not have been achieved by Sahagun, particularly in a
project so fueled by such a grand dream as his. Total fidelity would also require perfect
translation: This was an impossible task, due to the vast difference between the ChristianEuropean, and Native perspectives and interpretations o f their universe. It was yet more
improbable because Sahagun was no stranger to the practice o f close, but loose
translation. Sahagun used a free interpretative style in his Spanish version. In Book I, for
example, a short Latin sentence grows into a large paragraph:
O quam suavis est, Domine, spiritus tuus in omnibus, which means:
Oh God our Lord! H ow kind and gentle is your spirit to all; and it is as if it
said: Oh God our Lord! your omnipotent love, that is your divine spirit,
pours goodness and gentleness over all the things that you created, giving
to all your creatures qualities that Man can use, and even you, yourself,
communicate with Man in diverse forms, showing your servants your
kindness. You give them enlightenment so that they might know you, and
commandments so that they serve you; so that knowing you and serving
you they might reach immortality; and those o f your servants who offend
you, you do not condemn them, but you warn them through your holy
preachers, and you favor them with your holy sacraments so that they may
abandon their sins, and remain in your most sacred friendship.123
121 Tzevetan Tddorov, 1982. P. 226.
122 Tzevetan Todorov, 1982. P. 230. The author goes on to admit that “[d]discourse, as has been said, is fatally
determined by the identity o f his interlocutor.” P. 231. Still it is unclear i f Todorov fully realizes that Fray
Bernardino was really not that different from other translator-compilers o f the period, such as Duran or Ohnos, in
that the Franciscan could not shut down his own voice or his own agendas.
123 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Prologue to Book I of Historia General, as published by Icazbalceta with the Arie
Adivinatoria, 1954, P. 377 column 2 , paragraph C. Original wording: “O quam suavis est, Domine, spiritus tuus
in omnibus, que quiere decir: jOh SeHorDios nuestro! cuan buenoy suave es el vuestro espiritu para con todos; y
es como si dijiese: jOh SenorDios Nuestro! el vuestro omnipotente amor, que es el vuestro divino espiritu,
derrama su bondad y suavidad sobre todas las cosas que criastes, dando a todas vuestras criaturas viriud de que
el hombre se pueda aprovechar, y a Vos mismo os comunicais al hombre en diversas maneras, mostrando a
vuestros siervos la vuestra benignidad; Ios dais lumbrepara que os conozcan, y mandamientos para que os
sirvan, para que conociendoos y sifviendoos alcancen la inmortalidad; y a Ios que vuestros siervos os ofenden no
48
The ‘translation’ went on, using the same tone, for a few more long sentences, completing
the paragraph. Sahagun used this free translation style and with it, he affected that which
he translated, Latin or Nahuatl.
Book IV o f the Historia (c. 1566), was titled: “About the judicial astrology or
divining art that these Mexicans used to know which days were o f good fortune and which
days were o ff bad fortune, and which conditions would have those who were born in the
days attributed to the types or signs there placed, which is all more necromancy than
astrology [note the value judgment incorporated here].”124 In this book, which shares
much o f its information with the later Arte Adivinatoria ,125 Sahagun expressed his
negative attitude towards the indigenous divining arts. He wrote in sharp and severely
critical terms, both o f the divining arts, and o f those Franciscans who defended any part o f
said arts. His position towards the divining arts is to be expected, but his sharp rebuke o f
other Franciscans demonstrated the severity o f Sahagun’s position:
It is not a calendar but a divining art, in which are contained many
idolatrous things, and many superstitions and invocations to demons,
implied and expressed, like it is Stated in the preceding book four, in such
manner that it is clear that there is no truth in the treatise recorded above,
written by that friar [in reference to Motolinia’s defense o f the Nahua
calendar], moreover it contains fallacies and harmful lies.126
Ios condenais luego, mas antes Ios amonestais porvuestros santos predicadores, y Ios favoreceis con vuestros
santos sacramentospara que se aparten de Iospecados, ypermanezcan en vuestra santisima amistad.”
124 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book TV. Original wording: “D e la astrologia
judiciaria o arte de adivinar que estos mexicanos usaban para saber cuales dias eran bien afortunadosy cuales
mal afortunadosy que condiciones tendrian Ios que nacian en Ios dlas atribuidos a Ios caracteres o signos que
aqui se ponen, y parece cosa de nigromancia que n o d e astrologia”
125 Chapter II o f the Arte, coincides with Chapter I o f Book IV, Chapter 32 o f the Arte coincides with Chapter 3 1 o f
Book IV o f the FfzstoWn, and so on. George Baudot. InEdmonson, 1974. P .1 8 1 .
126FrayBem ardinodeSahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. Book IV. Appendix. P .3 7 3 . Original wording:
“[N]o es calendario sino arte adivinatoria, donde se contienen muchas cosas de idolatria, y muchas supersticiones
y muchas invocaciones de Ios demonios, tdcitay expresamente, como parece en todo este cuarto Iibro precedente,
49
In the later Arte the tone, and by extension, Sahagun’s dedication to his cause, did
not loose any force. Actually, the Friar’s tone is increasingly condemnatory and even
exhasperated: “All are lies and fallacies. It is not anything else but from the devil Satan,
enemy o f God and o f Men.”127 The constancy o f Sahagun’s work, throughout the years,
illuminates his attachment to the millenarian and apostolic dream, his desperate fight to
preserve it, his frustration, and his stubborn nature. The force o f his drive does not show
Sahagun to have been limited to the saintly, and weak man described by late nineteeth
century biographer, Icazbalceta: “[0]ld man, almost in his nineties, peaceful by
character.”128 Perhaps a closer, and more balanced description o f the Friar was that one
written by Sahagunian scholar Angel Ma. Garibay, who in his introduction to the 1956
edition o f the Historia, noted:
That famous man was intellectually acute, and keen, o f lively talent,
tenacious about the pursuit o f data. He was understanding, o f fine feelings,
not without vehemence, perhaps more passionate than fair, partisan and
suspicious. He was physically robust, full o f energy for his work, untiringly
active, always alert.129
de manera que ninguna verdad contiene aquel tratado arriba puesto, que aquel religioso escribid [in reference to
Motolinia’s defense o f the Nahua calendar], mas antes contiene falsedad y mentira muy pem iciosa.”
127 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatqria. In Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 385 column I. Original wording:
“\T]odo esto es mentira y falsedad, que no es sino el diablo Satands, enemigo de D io sy de Ios hombres.”
128 Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 332 column I. Original wording: “[A]nciano cast nonagenario, pacificopor
car d eter”
129 AngelM ariaGaribay, 1956. Introduction to Fray Bernardino de Sahagun’s Historia General. Volume I. Book I..
7-23. P. 22-23. Original wording: “Fue aquel insigne vardn, en Io intelectual, agudo, penetrante, vivo de ingenio,
tenaz en lapersecucion del data. Comprensivo, fino de sentimientos, no sin vehemencia, acaso mds ardiente de Io
que era justo, partidarista y suspicaz. Robusto en su fisico, de grandes energias para el trabajo, de una
incansable actividad siempre en vela.”
Sahagun’s A uthority to W rite A bou t th e N ahua
In Medieval hermeneutics, knowledge was an act o f God, and understanding could
be achieved through the guidance o f traditional authorities. These authorities, the likes o f
Erasmus and St. Thomas Aquinas, had “ma[de] manifest {manifestare) [...] knowledge
and [had] preserve[d] it against the eroding forces o f time,”130 by composing summas.
These summas provided those who followed with a map to understanding the Christian
God’s universe, his plans, and people’s role within them. In other words, the traditional
authorities created the categories upon which the whole universe could be ordered. They
conceptualized the Western experience. That is, until traditional knowledge was
challenged forever by the discovery o f the N ew World, and the encounter with cultures
that were incomprehensible, and impossible to organize by the use o f Medieval
hermeneutics. When Fray Bernardino’s superiors gave him the mandate to start his study
on indigenous matters, the Friar faced a project for which traditional authorities, from
within his historical and cultural context, did not exist.
As a scholar trained in the tradition o f La Compostelana, Sahagun had to find a
way to authorize his work. He had to negotiate the legitimacy o f his work between what
he assumed to be real, his own pre-existing categories, and his new experience in N ew
Spain. Initially, Fray Bernardino felt he had only one recourse: H e had to depend on his
capacity as a witness of, and participant in the cultural encounter. Sahagun addressed his
130
Walden Browne, 1996. P. 139.
51
preoccupation with the authority o f his work, and noted this solution in the prologue to
B ook II:
AU authors attempt to authorize their works as best as they can,
some with reliable witnesses, others with previous writers whose
testimonies have been proven as true, others with testimony from the Holy
Scriptures. I have lacked all those foundations to authorize these twelve
books, and I can not find another basis to authorize it that to add here all
the work I did to know the truth o f all which is written here.131
This solution took Sahagun closer to a modem hermeneutics, where his own voice would
represent a valuable asset. However, he limited the integrity o f his claims to authority by
considering that only his efforts to find the truth lent value to his words. He stated that he
lacked “reliable witnesses,” therefore ignoring the indigenous people’s ability, and
authority to speak for their own cultures, and devaluing their contribution. By claiming
that he lacked worthwhile witnesses, he refuted and invalidated at some levels his repeated
claims o f the veracity o f the information provided by the indigenous participants: “It is
certain that they told the whole truth,”132 and again, “all the knowledgeable Indians
would affirm that this language is appropriate to their ancestors, and the things they
did,”133 and, “according to the assertions o f the elders^ in whose power were the
131 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. Book R Prologue. P .1 0 5 . Original wording:
iiTodos Ios escritores trabajan de autorizar sus escrituras Io mejor que pueden, unos con testigos fidedignos, otros
con otros escritores que antes de ellos han escrito, Ios testimonies de Ios cuales son habidos p o r ciertos; otros con
testimonios de Ia Sagrada Escritura. A mi me hafaltado todos estos fundamentos para autorizar Io que en estos
doce libros tengo escritos, y no hallo otro fundamento para autorizarlo sino poner aqui la relacidn de la
diligencia que hicepara saber la verdad de todo Io que en estos libros se escribe.”
132 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneral. Volume IV. Book XE. A l Lector. P .2 1 . Original wording:
iiIQjue tienepor cierto que dijeron toda verdad.”
133 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume n. Book VI. Prologue. P .5 3 . Original wording: “ [Y]
todos Ios indios entendidos [...] afirmarian que este lenguaje espropio de sus antepasados, y obras que ellos
hacian.”
52
paintings and memories o f the old things,”134 and once more, “as it is gathered from
believable conjectures.”135 These Sahagunian contradictions reflect a tension between his
level o f admiration, or respect for the Nahua voices, and at the same time, an intense sense
o f distrust. These contradictions might have been fueled by the fact that Fray Bernardino
needed to believe the indigenous informants to prove that they were lying about their
conversions. The task itself was equivocal. The Franciscan, ultimately could only depend
on himself to authorize those versions that would serve his many interests. Even though
the presence o f Sahagufrs voice gave the work a particular value and meaning, the Friar
viewed the need to “rely on [his American] experience [...] more as a concession than an
innovation.”136
Fray Bernardino’s insecurity about the authorization o f his Historia was reflected
in the “veritable avalanche o f prologues”137 and addresses to the reader, both from within
his culture, and from the Mexican one. These interpolations appear in numerous places,
with the prologues, found in the beginning o f almost all the books, setting the tone for the
reader. The prologues and addresses permitted Sahagun to hold to the strings o f his
work. They reminded the reader, continuously, o f why the compilation o f the Historia
was o f fundamental importance, o f how the Friar’s experience amongst the Nahua, and his
struggles in the production o f the encyclopedia validated and legitimized the compendium.
134 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume E. Book VHI. Prologue. P. 280. Original wording:
“Segiin que ajimian Ios viejos, en cuyo poder estaban laspinturasym em orias de las cosas antiguas.”
135FrayBem ardinodeSahagun. HistoriaGeneraL V o lu m e ! Book I. Prologue. P .3 0 . Original wording:
“\S\egun se coligepor conjeturas verosimiles.”
136 Walden Browne, 1996. P. 139.
137 Walden Browne, 1996. P. 147.
53
Finally, they gave his audience the keys through which to interpret the Nahua version o f
the world. Those keys told the reader to admire a few things, to condescend several
others, and to condemn a great many, anything that Sahagun deemed idolatrous.
Sahagun presented the significance o f the Historia, and later o f the Arte,
immediately and then he reiterated it throughout the works. The prologue to Book I
contains a fairly formal proclamation o f Sahagun’s intent, together with a presentation o f
his credentials, and those o f Toral, from whom he wrote that he received the mandate:138
So that the ministers o f the Gospel who will follow those who first
came, in the cultivation o f this vine o f the Lord, will have no reason to
complaint about the first for having left the things, o f the natives o f N ew
Spain, in the dark, I, Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, professed friar o f the
Order o f Our Seraphic Father Saint Francis, observant, original from the
village o f Sahagun, in Campos, under mandate o f the very Reverend Father
Fray Francisco Toral, Provincial o f this Holy Gospel Province, and later
Bishop o f Campeche and Yucatan, wrote twelve books about the divine
things, or better yet the idolatrous human and natural things o f the natives
o f this N ew Spain.139
Sahagun’s intention to eradicate idolatry from N ew Spain, his own personal war against
the devil, enemy o f God’s plan, served to establish the legitimacy o f the Franciscan’s
work: “The zeal for the truth and for the Catholic faith compels me.”140 Fray Bernardino
138 Although it is w ell known that the initial charge came from Motolinia, Sahagun, perhaps due to his frustration
with the first Twelve, and the failure o f their conversions, focused on the later mandate received from Fr. Toral.
139 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. P. 27-28. Original wording: “Pues p o r que
Ios ministros del Evangelio que sucedemn a Ios queprimero vinieron, en la cultura de esta nueva vina del Senor
no tengan ocasion de quejarse de Ios primeros, p o r haber dej'ado a oscuras las cosas de estos naturales de esta
Nueva Espana, yo, fray Bernardino de Sahagun, fraile profeso de la Orden de Nuestro Serdfico P. San Francisco,
de la observancia, natural de la Villa de Sahagun, en Campos, p o r mandato del muy Reverendo Padre el P. Fray
Francisco Toral, provincial de esta Provincia del Santo Evangelio, y despues Obispo de Campechey Yucatan,
escribi doce libros de las cosas divinas, o p o r mejor decir iddldtricas, y humanasy naturales de esta Nueva
Espana ”.
140 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Apendice del Cuarto Libro, en Romance, y es una
A pologiaenD efensidndelaV erdadqueenelseC ontiene. 369-374. P .3 7 1 . Original wording: “El celo de la
verdad y de Iafe catdlica me com pele”
54
insisted upon the vital nature o f his purpose throughout his life. In the 1585 treatise on
the indigenous divining arts. Arte Adivinatoria, Sahagun reiterated his argument: “This
church was founded over false ground, and even having put some supports, it remains hurt
and ruined. So that this mistake may be repaired with patience and care, the Calendar was
written, and now the treatise on the Divining Arts is written.”141
Fray Bernardino cemented his authority through his knowledge of, and experiencenear participation with the Nahua, and Nahuatl. He made character remarks on the
indigenous people, based on his experience as their teacher, to illustrate his own capacity
as a loving, and one might say paternal witness: “They are very capable o f learning all the
liberal arts, and holy theology, as it has been seen by experience o f all those who were
taught these sciences. [...] They are not less capable for our Christianity if they were
properly educated in it.”142 Sahagun also gave the reader updates on the progress and
struggles involved in the compilation and composition o f his work: “To redeem a
thousand gray hairs, because with much less work than I, those who wish will be able to
know, in little time, many o f the antiquities and all the language o f this Mexican
people.”143 This served to create a sense o f familiarity that gained the reader to the Friar’s
141 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Arte Adivinatoria. In Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 383 column I. Original wording: iiEsta
Iglesia nueva quedo fimdada sobrefalso, y aim con haberle puesto algunos estribos, esta todavia bien lastimaday
amiinada. A proposito de que este avieso se vaya enmendando con mucha prudencia y tiento, se ha escrito el
Calendario, y ahora se escribe esta tratado de la Arte Adivinatoria."
142 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. P. 31. Original wording: “[S]ow tambien
hdbiles para aprender todas las artes liberales, y la santa Teologia, como p o r experiencia se ha visto en aquellds
que han sido ensehados en estas ciencias.[...] Pues no son menos hdbiles para nuestro cristianismo sino en el
debidamentefueron cultivados."
143 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. Prologo. P. 29. Original wording: “Es para
redimir mil canas, porque con harto menos trabajo de Io que aqui me cuesta, podrdn Ios que quisieren, saber en
poco tiempo muchas de sus antiguallasy todo el lenguaje de esta gente mexicana.”
55
cause. Sahagun’s authorization claims, based upon his role as witness, helped him achieve
what Historian Roland Barthes (1970) calls the “effect o f the real,” by repeating
incessantly: “[I]t happened [or better yet, I saw it happen].”144 In Sahagun’s words:
“Which I, as first hand witness, compiled in this Mexican language.”145
Sahagun’s authoritative knowledge o f Nahuatl and the Nahua culture lent his work
valuable legitimacy. His knowledge was established, beyond question, through a life
dedicated to the production o f innumerable original Nahuatl works and translations.
Sahagun’s contemporaries noted the great value o f Fr. Bernardino’s skill. This was clearly
stated by Mendieta, Sahagun’s fellow Franciscan missionary in N ew Spain: “I realize that
none will understand the secrets and qualities o f the aforesaid language as well as these
tw o, [Friars Bernardino de Sahagun and Alonso de Molina] who have achieved it from the
natural speech o f the old Natives.” 146 More recent Sahagunian scholars accept this claim
to authority. Arthur J. 0 . Anderson referred to the Franciscan as the “best Nahuatlt”147
(1983), Barry D. Sell wrote that Sahagun was “among the most outstanding persons
144 Roland Barthes. “The Discourse o f History.” PeterW exler5Trans. Structuralism: A Reader. Michael Lanek5
E dt London: 1970. A s quoted in Rabasa5 p. 9.
145 Fray Bernardino de Sahagtin. H istoriaG enerai Volume HI. B ook X . Prologue. P .9 7 . Original wording: “[Lo]
cualyo como testigo de vista compile en esta lengua mexicana.”
146 Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta believed that it was an statement made by Mendieta. In appears in the 1Tnforme de la
Provincia del Santo Evangelic al Visitador Lie. Juan de Ovando” and it was published under the title Codice
franciscano. Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta5 Edt. Mexico: Editorial Salvador Chavez Hayhoe5 1941. P. x-xi, 61. A s
quoted in Arthur J.O. Anderson. “Sahagun’s Doctrinal Encyclopedia.” Estudios de Cultura Ndhuatl. Mexico
City5 D.F., M exico. V.16, 1983. 109-122. P. 110-11.
147 Arthur J.O. Anderson. “Sahagun’s Doctrinal Encyclopedia.” Estudios de Cultura Ndhuatl. M exico City5D.F.,
Mexico. V .16, 1983. 109-122. P. HO.
56
engaged in early Nahuatl studies”148 (1994), or as Inga Clendinnen put it in 1987, Fr.
Bernardino was: “A superb linguist, with a fine and observing eye.”149 Sahagun himself
also legitimized his work on the basis o f its language, as something so different that it
could not have been invented. Sahagun does not seem to have considered that those
within the Nahua culture had a perfect domain o f Nahuatl, and the sophistication to use it
to their advantage. Sahagun, either somewhat naively, or most astutely, wrote that it was
impossible for any human to invent the information that he recorded, hence it had to be all
true: “That which is written in this book is beyond the understanding o f human men to be
able to make it up, nor could any living man make up the language which is in it.”150
Perhaps due to Sahagmfs insecurities, and undoubtedly due to his training at the
University o f Salamanca, he interpolated in his work the known past to aid in his
translation o f Nahua culture. He could not distance himself from the historical, academic,
religious, and cultural foundations upon which he supported his interpretation o f the
universe. For this reason he viewed the Nahua through the myths and experiences o f the
familiar: He applied to the indigenous people o f N ew Spain the myths o f Christianity,
Spain, Greeks, Romans, Moors, and Jews. He even made comparative references to the
Arthurian legend: “The deal with the king o f these natives is like that o f King Arthur’s
148 Barry D. Sell. “A ll the Way to Guatemala: Sahagun’s Sermonario o f 1548.” Chipping Away on Earth: Studies in
Prehispanic and Colonial M exico in Honor o f Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. D ibble. Eloise Qihones
Keber, Edt. Lancaster: Labyrinthos, 1994. 37-44. P. 38.
149 Inga Clendinnen. Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan. 1517-1570. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987. P. 85.
150FrayBem ardinodeSahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume n. Book VI. Prologue. P .5 3 . Original wording: “[L]o
que en este Hbro esta escrito no cabe en entendimiento de hombre humano el fingirlo, ni hombre viviente pudiera
fingir el lenguaje que en el esta.”
57
among the English.”151 H e defined the indigenous people, and their accomplishments in
graspable terms, comparing the Nahuas’ experiences to his own known experiences:
“There are so many examples among the Greeks and Romans, Spaniards, French and
Italians, that there are books filled with them. The Indian nation used these same things,
and especially among the Mexicans.”152 Sahagun applied to the Nahua scriptural
mythology, explaining that they suffered the curse o f Jeremias, who prophesied the
destruction o f Jerusalem and Judea on the hands o f a stronger invading force: “This work
will be o f great value to gain knowledge about the value o f this Mexican people, which is
still unknown, because that curse o f Jeremiah, spoken in behalf o f God and sent upon
Judea and Jerusalem, also came upon them. This, word by word, happened to the
Indians.”153 With the same tone, he equated the Nahua to the Moors, who he believed
had lost both their souls and bodies. Sahagun hoped to bring the Nahua to his faith before
they shared the Moorish fate: 1Tt would be very advisable now to remedy this among the
Indians, in such a way that their disguised and false faith, now seen [...] could be
remedied, so that they would not end up like those misfortuned Moors, who lost their
souls and their bodies, the temporal and the spiritual, and all o f them perished.”154
151 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume II. Book VHl Prologue. P. 281. Original wording:
iiEstd el negocio de este rey entre estos naturales, como el del rey Arthus entre Ios ingleses.”
152 Fray Bernardino de Sahagiin. Historia General. Volume H. Book VI. Prologue. P. 53. Original wording: iiHay
de estos tantos ejemplos entre Ios griegosy latinos, espanoles, franceses e italianos, que estdn Ios libros llenos de
esta materia. Esto mismo se usaba en esta nation indiana, y mas printipalmente entre Ios mexicanos.”
153 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. Prologue. P. 29. “Aprovechard mucho toda
esta obrapara conocer el quilate de esta gente mexicana, el cual atm no se ha conocido, porque vino sobre ellos
aquella maldition que Jeremias de parte deD ios fulmind contra JudeayJerusalem [...] Esto a la letra ha
acontecido a estos indios.” '
154 Fray Bernardino de Sahagiin. ArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. Prologue. P. 384 column I . Original
wording: “Convendria ahora grandemente remediar este negocio entre Ios indios, de tal manera que esta paliacion
58
Fray Bernardino’s comparisons o f the tw o completely different worlds continued
throughout the texts. He referred to Roman builders and Venice to explain the Mexican
capital city. Comparing the Nahua building and governing skills to those o f the Romans
or Venetians was no small compliment: “They had the succession o f the Romans, and as
the Romans they built their Capitolio as its defense [...] Many years latter the Mexicans
built the city o f M exico, which is another Venice, and in their knowledge about
governance they were as the Venetians.”155 He also translated the indigenous gods into
understandable Greco-Roman models. Hence, Huitzilopochtli was another Hercules,
Tezcatlipoca was another Jupiter, Chicomecoatl another Ceres, Chalchiuhtlicue another
Juno, Tlazolteotl another Venus, and Xiuhtecutli another Vulcan.156
Fray Bernardino reached out in an attempt to grasp at traditionally authorized
sources: He made references to past works such as those o f Saint Agustine, Virgil,
Cicero, and Saint Gregory. These references, although unable to give the Friar direct
guidance, did help him justify his endeavor, and served to demonstrate the author’s
scholarly authoritative knowledge. Sahagun noted the value o f St. Agustine’s study o f
gentile theology in The City o f God, to help those same gentiles understand the fallacy o f
their gods, and used it as justification for his own endeavor:
y Jiccion de su fe, que ahora se ve [...] se remediase, y no viniesen a lfin que vinieron aquellos malaventurados
moros, queperdieron las dnim asy Ios cuerpos, Io temporal y Io espiritual, y todos ellos perecieron.”
155 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. Prologue. P. 29-30. Original wording:
tenido la sucesidn de Ios romanos, y como Ios romanos edificaron el Capitoliopara sufortaleza [...]
Muchos anos despues Ios mexicanos edificaron la ciudad de Mexico, que es otra Venecia, y ellos en saber y en
policia son otros venecianos.”
156 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. P. 43-94.
59
It was not superfluous or vain for the divine Saint Augustine to
discuss the false theology o f the gentiles in book six o f The City o f God,
because, as he well said, once those false and vain fictions beliefs that the
gentiles had about their false gods are known, it could easily be shown to
them that they were not gods, and that they had nothing o f benefit to offer
to a rational creature.157
He also validated his work by saying that it was “as well authorized and true as those
written by Virgilio, and Cicero, and the other authors o f the Latin language.”158 Again, in
the Carta Dedicatoria, he gave his work traditional fundations: “And thinking to myself
how I could enhance this great benefit, the words o f the glorious doctor Saint Gregory
came to memory: Mejor no haber nacido que nacer para ir a pena etema.”159
Finally, Sahagun authorized his work by granting himself the approval o f the
indigenous people themselves, and further qualifying those who would support his work as
those with knowledge: “[A]ll the knowledgeable Indians, if asked, would affirm that this
language is appropriate to their ancestors, and the things they did.”160 This qualification
might have been necessary for two reasons. On the one hand, it served to distinguish his
informants from all the other Nahua, who the Friar constantly described in negative tones.
157 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book IH. Prologue. P. 269. Original wording: “ No
tuvo p o r casa superflua, ni vana el divino Agustino tratar de la Teologiafabulosa de Ios gentiles, en el Iibro sexto
de LA CIUDAD DE DIOS, porque, como el dice, conocidas lasfdbulas y ficciones vanas que Ios gentiles tenian
acerca de sus dioses flngidos, pudiesen facilmente darles a entender que aquellos no eran dioses, ni podian dar
cosa ninguna que fuese provechosa a la criatura rational.”
158 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. A l Sincero Lector. P. 32. Original wording:
“T]otfos maneras de hablar, y todos Ios vocablos que esta lengua usa, tan bien autorizadosy ciertos como Io que
escribid Virgilio, y Ciceron, y Ios demds autores de la lengua latino.”
159 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. CartaDedicatoriaDelAutor. P. 25. Original
wording: “Ypensando en mi como podria encarecer este tan gran beneftcio, me vinieron a la memoria las
palabras del gloriosisimo D octor San Gregorio [...] nihil nobis nasci profuit, nisi redimi profuisset.”
160 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume II. Book VI. Prologue. P .5 3 . Original wording: “ [Y]
todos Ios indios entendidos, si fueran preguntados, afirmaricm que este lenguaje es propio de sus antepasados, y
obras que ellos hacian.”
60
He did so with particular vehemence in his Arte: “The fraud that was made, and the
fictitious manner with which they deceived the first preachers,”161 and “they run away
from hearing the preaching, and use such frivolous excuses that their wickedness is clearly
understood,”162 and again, in reference to their religious leaders: “Divining and lying
prophets.”163 On the other, it defended the veracity o f his work from anyone who might
have doubt it. In fact, Fr. Bernardino directed himself to his audience in the address A l
Lector, in B ook XII, and stated: “Those who were conquered knew and gave an account
o f many things which transpired among them during the war o f which those who
conquered were unaware [...] And those who gave this account [were] principal persons
o f good judgment, and it is believed they told the truth.”164 Thejudgment o f those
principales was not in question for Sahagun. His perception that their judgment was
‘good’ (or in our terms ‘agenda-free’) was based on the fact that their information served
to aid his own interests. Fray Bernardino, in other words, heard what he wanted to hear,
when he wanted to hear it, and he struggled to guide the reader to reach the conclusions
for which the Friar aimed. For this reason, the secure establishment o f authority was
fundamental. The Nahua were not the real enemy, Satan was. Sahagun reserved for
161 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. Prologue; P. 383 column 2. Original
wording: “[E]l embuste que se h izo y ficcion con que enganaron a Ios dichos primeros predicadores.”
162 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. Prologue. P. 384 column I. Original
wording: “[Hjzryen de oir las predicaciones, yponen para su excusa unas causas tan frivolas, que se entiende de
muy claro su maldad.”
163 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. Capitulo 1°. P. 387 column 2. Original
wording: “[Pjro/efas adevinos y mentirosos."
164 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneral. Volume IV. Book XE. A l LECTOR. P .2 1 . Original wording:
“[L]o,s que fueron conquistados supieron y dieron relacion de muchas cosas que pasaron entre ellos durante la
guerra, las cuales ignoraron Ios que Ios conquistaron [...] [Y] ellos dieron esta relacion, y personas principales y
de buenjuicio, y que tiene p o r cierto que dijeron toda la verdad.”
61
himself the power to decide when the Nahua informants were telling the truth, and when
the Devil had them in his grasp, which was usually when they did not follow the
Franciscan’s designs.
62
CHAPTER 3
SAHAGUN’S RAISON D ’ETRE
Towards a Pluritopical Understanding*165 o f Sahagun’s Work
Sahagun’s work reflected a complex set o f agendas that inter-played with each
other even when seemingly conflicting. Fr. Bernardino played a number o f different roles,
each one expressing sometimes slight, and other times fully divergent, interests: He was a
Spanish male o f his times, a Franciscan friar and seraphic soldier o f Christ, and an scholar
and teacher. Modern Mexican scholar Jesus Bustamante Garcia criticized Sahagun’s
perspective by labeling it as “nefarious.” Bustamante went on to say: “Sahagun is an
extremely fine observer, an excellent authority on traditional indigenous culture, but here,
with more clarity than in other parts [o f his corpus], his fundamental point o f view is
apparent: He is not an ethnologist, he is an inquisitor.”166 Bustamante’s statement is
somewhat limited. Actually, Sahagun was both and more: ethnologist, inquisitor,
paternalist, admirer, denouncer, and the carrier o f the banner o f a dying dream. His
perspective was not fully nefarious, nor fully innocent, and it shifted beyond those limited
165 JoseRabasa. Inventmg America: Spanish Historiography and the Formation o f Eurocentrism. Nonnan and
London: University o f Oklahoma Press, 1993. P. 14.
165 Bustamante Garcia. Fray Bernardino de Sahagun: Una Revision Critica de Ios Manuscritos v de su Proceso de
Composicion. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autdnoma de M exico, Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliograficas,
Biblioteca Nacional y Hemeroteca Nacional, 1991. P .3 7 6 . A s quoted by Browne, 1996. P. 111. Original
wording included: “Sahagun es, sin duda, un finisimo observadory un excelente conocedor de la cultura indigena
tradicional, pero aqui, con mas claridad que en otras partes, se destaca su punto de vista fundamental: no es un
etnologo, es un inquisidor.”
63
oppositions. Fray Bernardino’s experience was made up o f concurrent incongruities that
leave the modem scholar with the image o f a complex man, in a complex time period.
Sahagun’s Scholastic and Educational Interests
As a scholar. Fray Bernardino set out to learn the language, according to his late
nineteenth century biographer Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, as soon as he boarded ship to
cross the Atlantic. Icazbalceta wrote that given Sahagun’s investigative character, he
would not have passed the chance to pick up as much o f the language as possible.167 In
fact, after only a few years in N ew Spain, the Friar’s skill had little competition. His
linguistic interests became a focal point o f his Historia. In the prologue to Book I, Fray
Bernardino wrote: “This work is like a sweeping net used to bring to light all the idioms o f
this language [Nahuatl], with its proper metaphors, and all its manners o f speech.”168
Sahagun the scholar was also concerned with the preservation o f a culture that he
could not help but admire: “The boys and girls were brought up with great rigor [...].
They raised them in the community under very solicitous and rigorous teachers.”169
Miguel Leon-Portilla called it: “The most cherished concern o f his life.”170 One can
extrapolate that after developing indigenous relationships, with his students, elders
167 Joaquin G. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 328 column I . The Emperor charged Fr. Antonio de Ciudad Rodrigo, who was
also bringing Sahagun and other nineteen friars to N ew Spain, with the guardianship and protection o f those
returning Indians.
168 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. Prologue. P. 28.
Original wording: “Es
esta obra como una red barrendera para sacar a Iuz todos Ios vocablos, de esta lengua con suspropiasy
metaforicas significaciones, y todas sus maneras de hablar.”
169 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume HI. Book X. Relacion del Autor, digna de ser notada.
P. 158. Original wording: “[L]oj muchachosy muchachas cridbanlos con gran rigor [...] Ios criaban de
comunidad debajo de maestros muy solicitosy rigurosos.”
170 M iguel Leon-Portilla, 1994. P. 14.
64
working, even teaching at the college,171 and burying so many during the great plague
(1545),172 Sahagun must have felt a need to save as much as possible o f Nahuatl and the
Nahua culture in which he had, and would continue to invest so much o f his life.
Sahagun’s admiration, particularly about certain aspects o f the Nahua world, as he
understood them, was genuine:
They were perfect philosophers and astrologers, and very capable in
all the mechanical arts o f defense, which was held in greater esteem than
any other virtue. [...] Concerning religion and the care o f their gods, I do
not believe that there have been, in the whole world, idolaters o f such
devotion and dedication to their gods like these o f N ew Spain; not even the
Jews, nor any other nation had such heavy burden filled with so many
celebrations.173
They were, certainly, in these things extremely devout to their gods,
jealous about their republics, among themselves very courteous; to their
enemies very cruel; to their own humane and strict; and I think that due to
these virtues they achieved their empire, although it lasted them only a
short while, and now all is lost.174
Still, “despite Sahagun’s professed admiration”175 for the indigenous world in
which he was an implant, his scholastic interests buckled repeatedly under the weight o f
his own impositions. His condescending superiority damaged his academic observation by
171 Such as Martin de la Cruz: Nahua medicine man that put together the magnificent herbal Codex Badiano or
Libellus de Medicinalibus Indoium Herbis. M iguel Ledn-Portilla, 1994. P. 16.
172 W aldenBrowne, 1996. P. 115.
173FrayBem ardinodeSahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. B ook !. Prologue. P .3 0 . Original wording:
“[FjneroM petfectos fildsofosy astrdlogosy muy diestros en todas las artes mechdnicas de la fortaleza, la cual
entre ellos era mas estimada que ninguna otra virtud [...] En Io que toca a la religiony cultura de sus dioses no
creo ha habido en el mundo idolatras tan reverenciadores de sus dioses, ni tan a su costa, como estos de esta
Nueva Espaha; ni losjudios, ni ninguna otra nacidn tuvoyugo ta n p esa d o yd e tantas ceremonias.”
174FrayBem ardinodeSahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume Tl. Book VI. Prologue. P .5 3 . Original wording:
“Fueron, cierto, en estas cosas extremados, devotisimos para con sus dioses, celosisimos de sus republicas, entre
si muy urbanos; para con sus enemigos muy crudes; para con Ios suyos humanos y severos; y pienso quep o r
estas virtudes alcanzaron el imperio, aunque poco Ies duro, y ahora todo Io han perdido.”
175 Walden Browne, 1996. P. 111.
65
encouraging the standardization o f his object o f study as lesser than, rather than distinct
from the Friar, and by the overvalorization o f his categorical assumptions. Sahagun the
scholar was unable to write a true ethnography. His work fits best under Mary Louise
Pratt’s terminology o f ‘contact zones’ wdtirigs created “in the space o f colonial
encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into
contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions o f
coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict.”176 At the starting point o f the era o f
modern thinking, Sahagun still did not view the Nahua as they represented themselves, but
as they fitted into his cultural pre-conceived stereotypes: He referred to them as child like
people177 and wrote that in their ancestral beliefs they acted “more [...] like children
without sense than [...] Uke reasoning men,”178 while noting the ease with which he
beheved they could be deceived and misguided.179
Both condescension and admiration towards the indigenous people o f N ew Spain
coexisted in the Franciscan, and both colored the compilation o f his ethnographic summa,
the Historia General and other works such as the later Arte Adivinatoria. In the Arte,
Sahagun explained that the prophesy given to Jeremiah: ‘Here, I have put my words in
your mouth and I have made you superior to all the people, and placed you above all
176 M aiy Louise Pratt, 1992. P. 6.
177 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume H. Book VTL Prologue. P. 255.
178 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. Confutacion. P. 94. Here Sahagun directs
him self to the indigenous people and lectures them, vehemently, about the mistakes and lies handed down to them
1by their ancestors. Original wording: “[MJas [...] ninos sin seso, que [...] hombres de razon."
179 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun1 HistoriaGeneraL Volume DL Book V K Prologue. P. 255, said Arte Adivinatoria.
Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 387 column 2.
66
kingdoms,”180 was given to the prophet to write, but its execution, and the Christian god’s
grant o f superiority over other peoples and over kingdoms was, in Sahagun’s
interpretation, “granted to the Roman Pontiffs who in these times, after the centenary o f
1600, govern the Catholic Church.”181 In his later years, the Franciscan still believed, in
spite o f his experience-near participation with the indigenous people, in the Christians’
superior status, and that this was his God’s will.
Academic concerns became secondary when for Sahagun the war against the
“enemy o f god and o f men,”182 was so close to being lost in N ew Spain. Sahagun lived
his American experience with anguish and anxiety on this matter, as illustrated in this
question to his god: “What is this Lord? You have permitted that for so long that enemy
o f human kind, at his pleasure, establish lordship over this sad and forsaken nation.”183
His anguish was also evident in his exclamation about the sacrifices o f children. Here
Sahagun again cried out to his god: “Oh Lord, do justice upon this cruel enemy who does
180 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun quotes Prophet Jeremiah. JnArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 382 column
I . Original wording: “Ecce dedi verba mea in ore tuo, ecce constitui te hodie super gentes et super regno”
181 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Arte Adivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 382 column I. Original wording:
“[C]oncedida a Ios Pontifices Romanos que en estos tiempos de este centenario postrero de mil y seiscientos
gobieman la Iglesia Catolica.”
182 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Arte Adivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 385 column I. Original wording:
“\E\nemigo de D io sy de Ios hombres.”
183 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia general. Volume I. Book I. Exclamaciones del Autor. P .9 5 . And in
Joaquin G. Icazbalceta, 1954. Exclamaciones del Autor. P. 380 column 2. Original wording: “iQue es esto, Seitor
Dios? que habeis permitido tantos tiempos que aquel enemigo del genero humano tan a su gusto se ensenorease de
esta tristey desamparada nacion.”
67
us so much evil, and wishes to do us even more! Take from him. Lord, all the power to
do harm!”184
As Important as the Franciscan’s scholarly pursuits were to him, they still were
only a part o f the reasons that drove him to study and record the Nahua experience. His
endeavor was not “the result o f a merely academic restlessness. The epoch did not permit
it, and the active life dedicated to evangelization gave Sahagun no time for it.”185
Ultimately, the culture and the language had to be recorded because it was “the vehicle to
penetrate the native mind,”186 to completely and unquestionably gain all the knowledge
necessary to eradicate idolatry. Once idolatry was eradicated, Nahuatl, and much o f
Nahua culture, hybridized with Spanish information, would be re-introduced in the service
o f Christ, to fit the “politico-religious utopia o f the Franciscans.”187 The old indigenous
world, once “cleansed o f all the idolatry that it contained, and making it fully Christian, it
would be re-introduced to this Indian and Spanish republic.”188
184 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book H. Exclamacion del Autor. P. 142. Original
wording: “jO/z senorDios, haced justicia de este cruel enemigo, que tanto mal nos h acey nos desea hacer!
jQuitadle, sefior, todo el poder de empecer.”
185 Alfredo Lopez Austin. InEdmonson, 1974. P .1 1 5 .
186 Alfredo Lopez Austin paraphrases M iguel Leon-Portilla. In Edmonson, 1974. P .1 1 5 . The original idea is from
Miguel Leon-Portilla. “Significado de la Obra de fra y Bernardino de Sahagun.” Estudios de Cultura
Novohispana. 1:13-28. 1966.
187 Alfredo Lopez Austin. In Edmonson, 1974. P 114. Austin quotes Jose Antonio Maravall. “Lautopiapoliticoreligiosq de losfranciscanosen Nueva Espaha.” Estudios Americanos. 2:199-228. 1949. Austin also bases his
statements on Sahagunian millenarism on the work o f Lluis Nicolau D ’Olwer. "Fray Bernardino de Sahagun
(1499-1590) ." Historiadores de America 9. (M exico City) Instituto Panamericano de Geografia e Historia, 1952:
155-170.
188 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. H istoriaGeneral Volume El. Book X. Relacion del Autor Digna de Ser Notada.
P. 161. Original wording: “\L\impiada de todo Io idoldtrico que tenia y haciendola del todo cristiana, se
introdujese en esta republica Indiana y espahola.”
68
A secondary purpose for this re-introduction was to remedy the damage made to
the Indians by those who, in removing their ordered systems, and introducing Spanish
ways, had promoted the fail into viciousness o f the indigenous population. In fact,
Sahagun blamed the land, and its climate, and added that it had affected the Spaniards in
the same measure:
I do not marvel as much about the faults and madness o f the natives
o f this land, because the Spaniards that live in it, and more so those who
are bom here, acquire those same bad inclinations. [...] But it is a great
disgrace for us that the native Indians, old sane and wise men, knew how to
remedy the damage that this land impresses in those who live in it; [...] and
w e drown under our bad inclinations; and certainly people are raised here,
as much the Spanish as the Indians, that are intolerable to rule and a heavy
burden to save. [...] Ifthat old form o f rule [...] once cleaned o f all
idolatry, and once made fully Christian, was reintroduced in this Indian and
Spanish republics, it would certainly be a great good, and it would be the
cause that could free one republic as much as the other o f great evils, and
free those who rule them from much effort.189
Still, Sahagun the teacher, through his experience at the Colegio, saw the parts o f
the Nahua world that did not conflict with his missionary calling with respect and
admiration. He vehemently defended the qualities o f his students and wrote with pride
about their accomplishments, demonstrating his appreciation for the Nahua educational
heritage: “Grammar, logic, rhetoric, and theology, w e know from experience that they
189 Fray Bernardino de, Sahagun. Historia General. Volume HI. Book X. R elaciondelAutorD ignadeSerN otada.
157-168. P. 160-161. Original wording: aY no me maravillo tanto de las tachasy dislates de Ios naturales de esta
tierra, porque Ios espanoles que en ella habitan, y mucho mas de Ios que en ella nacen, cobran estas malas
inclinaciones. [...PJero es gran verguenza nuestra que Ios indios naturales, cuprdosy sabios antiguos, supieron
dar remedio a Ios danos que esta tierra imprime en Ios que en ella viven [...]ynosotros nos vamos al agua abajo
de nuestras malas inclinaciones; y cierto, se cria aqui una gente, asi espanola como india, que es intolerable de
regiry pesadisima de salvor. [...SJz aquella manera de regir [...] Iimpiada de todo Io idoldtrico que teniay
haciendola del todo cristiana, se introdujese en esta republica Indiana y espanola, cierto seria gran bienyserta
causa de librar asl a la una republica como a la otra de grandes males, y de grandes trabajos a Ios que las
rigen.”
69
have ability for all o f it, and they learn it, and know it, and teach it, and there isn’t an art
that they are not capable o f learning and using.”190 Sahagun wanted to continue that
educational heritage through the work o f the Franciscans and the Native teachers and aids
at the Colegio de Tlatelolco. Sahagun wrote that the school had functioned for over forty
years, and the students had never erred “against God, nor against the Church, nor against
the King, nor against his republic.” Instead they had helped the apostolic work, and even
composed sermons freed from any idolatry. Sahagun ended his statement by expressing
fear that this all might be lost: “I have great fear that this will be completely lost.”191
Sahagun wrote with sorrow about the damage done to the indigenous population,
and particularly to the students at the college, during the plagues (1545 and 1576). He
was concerned that not only many were lost, but that it was due to the lack o f Spanish
support towards the education o f the Nahua. That lack o f education left them with no
means to heal themselves:
The plague w e had about thirty one years ago hit the school greatly,
and this new plague in this year o f 1576 is doing the same. So much so
that there is almost no one left at the school. Almost all leave dead or ill.
[...] And if there would have been attention and care that these Indians
190 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume EL Book X. R elaciondelAutorD ignadeSerN otada.
P. 158. Original wording: “Gramdtica, Logica, Retorica, Astrologia, y Teologia, todo esto tenemospor
experiencia que tienen habilidad para e llo y Io aprendeny Io saben, y Io ensenan, y no hay arte ninguna que no
tengan habilidad para aprenderla y usarla.”
191 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume m . Book X. RelaciondelAutorD ignadeSerN otada.
P. 166-167. Original wording: “H a ya mas de cuarenta ahos que este Colegio persevera, y Ios colegiales de el en
ninguna cosa han delinquido, ni contra Dios, ni contra la Iglesia, ni contra el rey, ni contra su republica, mas
antes han ayudado y ayudan en muchas cosas a la plantacion y sustentacion de nuestra santa f e catolica, porque
si sermonesy p o stilla sy doctrinas se han hecho en la lengua Indiana, que pueden p a recery sean Hmpios de toda
herejta, son precisamente Ios que con ellos se han compuesto. [...] Recelo tengo muy grande que esto se ha de
perder del todo.”
70
were instructed in grammar, logic, natural philosophy, and medicine, they
could have saved many who died [..] and so they die without help.192
Fray Bernardino believed that there was a point in common between the American
aborigines and the Spaniards. They shared a common descent, a shared lineage from
Adam, he who the Christians accepted as the first man created by their God, and as the
father o f all subsequent generations. This shared lineage justified, in the eyes o f Sahagun,
a Christian obligation to care for the indigenous people, and to guide them to what he
perceived was the right path: “It is certain that these peoples are our brethren, proceeding
o f the trunk o f Adam. They are our fellow beings. We are obliged to love them as w e
love ourselves. We are the same.”193
Sixteenth Century Spanish Male
Sahagun the Spanish man was a subject o f the Crown, and a member o f the
Catholic flock. He was, in the words o f Mary Louise Pratt, part o f the “historicalcolonial-ideological explanatory apparatus.”194 In spite o f his love for his indigenous
students, and his admiration for certain aspects o f Nahua culture, the Friar never did cast
doubt over the Crown’s or the Church’s authority, and he did not put the indigenous
people’s well being ahead o f the Spanish-Catholic Imperial designs. His apparently pro-
192 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume HI. Book X. R elaciondelAutorD ignadeSerN otada.
P. 167-168. Original wording: “La pestilencia que hubo ahora a treintayun anos dio gran banque al Colegio, y
no Ie ha dado a menor estapestilencia de este ano de 1576, que casi no estdya nadie en el Colegio, muertosy
enfermos, casi todos son salidos. [...] Y si se hubiera tenido atenciony advertencia a que estos indios hubieran
sido instruidos en la Gramdtica, Logica y Filosofia Natural, y Medicina, pudieran haber socorrido (a) muchos de
Ios que han muerto [...]^ asi se muerenpor no tener remedio ni socorro.”
193 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. Book I. Prologue. P .3 1 .
Original wording: “\P]ues
es certisimo que estas gentes todas son nuestros hermanos, procedentes del tronco deAddn como nosotros, son
nuestrosprojimos, a quien somos obligados a amar como a nosotros mismos, quid quid sit.”
194 Mary Louise Pratt, 1992. P. 137.
71
Indian perspective, was not truly pro-Indianism, but an apparently benevolent part o f the
colonialist rhetoric at large. He never approximated the Dominican Father Bartolome de
Las Casas, who in his later years had come to believe that it was better for the indigenous
population to remain free heathens than to exist as enslaved Christians, who supported
indigenous autonomy, and who pushed “those who had robbed the Indians to make
restitution.”195
Although Sahagun criticized Spanish abuses perpetrated on the Indians: “This has
occurred to the Indians with the Spanish: They, and their things, were run down and
destroyed to such degree that nothing was left o f who they once were,”196 and although
he wrote against the Spanish destruction o f the pre-Hispanic indigenous order, which left
them without “all the regiment that they had,”197 Sahagun believed that it remained the
obligation o f the Crown, and the Church, to maintain control over the Indies and the
native population. In turn, it was the obligation o f the indigenous population to labor to
195 Juan Friede. Las Casas and Indigenism in the Sixteenth Century. Bartolome de Las Casas in History: Towards an
Understanding o f the Man and His Work. Juan Friede and Benjamin Keen, Eds. D e Kalb: Northern Illinois
University Press, 1971. 127-234. P, 203. Las Casas wrote: “None may lawfully deprive any group o f men, be
they Christian or gentile, o f dominion over their lands and o f the right to have kings or princes in order that they
may freely govern themselves. The rulers o f the Indians are independent and sovereign. In Venancio Cairo. The
Spanish Theological-Juridical Renaissance and the Ideology o f Bartolome de Las Casas. In Juan Friede and
BenjaminKeen, 1971. 235-277. P .2 6 8 .
196 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. Prologue. P. 29. Original wording: “Esto
[...] ha acontecido a estos indios con Ios espaholes: fueron tan atropelladosy destruidos ello sy todas sus cosas,
que ninguna apariencia Ies quedo de Io que eran antes.”
197 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume m . Book X. R elacionesdelAutorD ignadeSer
Notada. P .1 5 9 . Original wording: "'[Y]odo el regimiento que tenian.”
learn “better the things o f the faith and [...] subject themselves to the most Christian
Prince.”198 Idolatry, and hence the Nahua belief system, had to be stamped out:
It was necessary to destroy all the idolatrous things, and all the
idolatrous building, and even the customs o f the republic that were mixed
with idolatrous practices, which were nearly all the customs that the
republic, with which they governed themselves, had. Because o f that it
was necessary to take it all apart, and to give them another form o f rule
that had nothing o f idolatry in it.199
Sahagun believed that both the Church, and the Spanish secular powers, had the
right and authority to follow resistance, or perceived resistance, with punishment: “They
are obliged to believe, through the preaching they usually receive; and if they rebel, they
are to be punished as heretics, because w e have the ecclesiastic and secular authority to do
so.”200 Thus, Fray Bernardino was a willing participant,and a supporter o f the Spanish
colonial enterprise, and o f the Catholic colonial-apostolic desire. He rationalized his
participation and support by imagining the two fully different cosmologies, the Nahua and
the European, as asymmetrical components o f the one he judged superior, his.
198 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume HI. Book X. RelacionesdelAutorD ignadeSer
Notada. P. 166. Original wording: To Ieam “mejor las cosas de la fe, y [...] estar sujetos «[1] Principe
CristiamsimoP
199 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneral. Volume HI. Book X. R elacionesdelAutorD ignadeSer
Notada. P. 159. Original wording: “Necesariofue destruir todas las cosas idoldtricas, y todos Ios edificios
idoldtricos, y aim las costumbres de la republica que estaban mezcladas con ritos de idolatriay acompanadas con
ceremonias idoldtricas, Io cual habia cast en todas las costumbres que tenia la republica con que se regia, y p o r
esta causa fue necesario desbaratarlo to d a y ponerles en otra manera depolicia, que no tuviese ningun resabio de
cosas de idolatria.”
200 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume HI. Book X. R elacionesdelAutorD ignadeSer
Notada. P. 166. Original wording: “[S]on obligados a creerlo, predicdndoselo como ordinariamente se Ies
predica; y siendo en esto rebeldes castigarlos como a herejes, pues hay autoridad depoder Eclesidstico y Seglar
para hacerloP
73
The Franciscan molded the Nahua to fit into his God’s plan, and consequently he
participated in the subjugation o f the Nahua under the yoke o f Spanish-Catholic paternalist
imperialism. Sahagunian subjugation expressed itself in the Friar’s expressions o f
coercive, and punitive love throughout his work: “Miraculously, our Lord sent a great
plague over all the Indians o f N ew Spain, as punishment for the war they waged against
his Christians, who he had sent in this journey,”201 and again, “until they had repented o f
what they had done, and had the intention to not do it again; in this way they left
instructed and punished.”202
This was not an original action created in response to Sahagun’s, and his world’s
encounter with N ew World experiences. Actually, Sahagun was following Christian
tradition where “the two most central and richest symbols, [...] God and Jesus Christ [...]
have their ambivalence o f love and domination, the protective and the punitive.”203
Sahagun’s love for the Nahua, as his God’s love for the Christians, was coercive.
Sahagunjoined in the creation o f N ew Spain as a landscape for Catholic and Spanish
action, and for a Counter-Reformation reaction:
Certainly, it appears that in this our times, and in these lands, and
with this people, our Lord wished to restore to the Church that which the
Devil had stolen from it in England, Germany, and France, in Asia and
201 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume IV. Book XE. Prologue. P. 19. Original wording:
“Milagrosamente nuestro Senor Dios envid gran pestilencia sobre todos Ios indios de esta Nueva Espana, en
castigo de la guerra que habian hecho a sus cristianos, p o r el enviados a kacer esta Jornada.”
202 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume H . Book X. R elacionesdelAutorD ignadeSer
Notada. P .1 6 3 . Original wording: “\H\asta que ellos [Indians] estabanya arrepentidos de Io que habian echoy
con proposito de no Io hacer mas, y asi salian de alii catequizados y castigados”
203 John W. Keber. Sahagun’s Psalmodia: ChristianLoveandDominationinSixteenth-CenturyMexico. I n Eloisa
Qinones Kebeir, 1994. P. 51.
74
Palestine, from which w e are left with the obligation to thank our Lord and
to work diligently in this his N ew Spain.204
The transformation o f the many upper Mesoamerican worlds,205 into N ew Spain,
with all the implied connotations, required a revision o f the Spanish, and by extension o f
the Catholic classification o f the universe. This was not a radical transformation. Instead,
it was the mere addition o f the Nahua somewhere beneath the upper echelons already
occupied by the Europeans. In Sahagun5s paternalistic eyes, the indigenous people
“were not capable o f such perfection.5’206 The Spaniards were still fueled by the furor and
the fervor o f the Reconquistd. They had no reason to question their superior placement in
their categorization o f reality. They saw themselves as the representatives o f God, and
thus their hegemony was unquestionable. “The discovery o f the unknown lands and the
conversion o f pagan peoples appeared to the Spaniards as a clear sign o f the providential
mission that [their] God had indicated for the chosen people.”207
Sahagun enumerated a series o f “truths” discovered with the N ew World where he
placed the Americas inside the somewhat expanded boundaries o f Euro-Christian
mythology, imposing a “Christian conceptualization o f history:”208 He wrote that the
204 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. Book I. Prologue. P .3 1 . Original wording:
“[Cjzerto, parece que en estos nuestros tiempos, y en estas tierrasy con esta gente, ha querido Nuestro SehorDios
restituir a la Iglesia Io que el demonio la ha robado (en) Inglaterra, AlemaniayFrancia, en Asia y Palestina, de
Io cual quedamos muy obligados de dar gracias a Nuestro Senary trabajarfielmente en esta su Nueva EspahaA
205 Meaning the many pre-Hispanic independent groups, and those interconnected, that had different traditions,
languages, self-identifications, and loyalties.
206 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume HI. Book X. R elacionesdelAutorD ignadeSer
Notada. P .1 6 2 . Original wording: "[Njo eran capaces de tanta perfection”
207 Enrique Florescano, 1994. P. 77.
208 John W. Keber, 1994. P. 56.
75
lands under the “torrid-zone to the Antarctic” were inhabitable, that the ocean was not
without end, that the population o f the world began in Babylon and it had expanded into
the N ew World, that the earthly paradise was in the N ew World, were the bones o f pre­
deluge giants were also found, and that although it was believed that no one had reached
the Americas before, “now it is said with certainty that the boat o f King Solomon came to
Peru, and to the Island o f Santo Domingo to take gold for the building o f the temple,” in
Jerusalem.209
Sahagun’s journey to N ew Spain had taken him through the proverbial looking
glass. Once there, he had to make sense o f what he witnessed and what he experienced.
He provided for continuity by interpreting apparently coincidental phenomena, between
the familiar and the non-familiar, as equivalent phenomena, in spite o f their categorical
incompatibility. For example, the indigenous informants explained a pre-Hispanic custom
defined, in the words o f modem historian, Inga Clendinnen, as “a condition o f misfortune
[that] had been contracted [where said...] condition could be ameliorated only by a
cautious, correct, and respectful renewal o f the correct relationship [with the sacred], so
209 FrayBem ardinodeSahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume IV. Book XE. Prologo del Autor. P. 17-18. “Cuando
estas tierras [...]■ se descubrieron, muchas verdades se descubrieron que antes estaban ocultas. La una de ellas fue.
que antes todos pensaban que era inhabitable toda esta tierra que esta debajo de la torrida-zona hasta el polo
antdrtico [...]. Asimismo se afirmaba antes de agora, que el mar oceano (que se estiende desde e lponiente adelate
en respecto a Espaha) no tenia cabo sin fin [...]. Hase tambien sabido de cierto, que la poblacion del mundo
comenzo de dcia aquellas partes donde esta la gran Babilonia la vieja, y de alii se ha venido poblando el mundo
hasta estas partes que se llama el nuevo drbe [...]. Parece tambien cosa cierta, que el paraiso terrenal esta entre
la torrida-zona y el norte-drtico, en el cual nuestro padre Addnynuestra madre Eva moraron no se cuantos dias,
y de aquellos dos se hinchlo de gente todo el mundo, y en esta partes hubo gigantes de Ios de antes del diluvio, y
han parecido aca huesosy toda la armazon de su grandeza, no solo en esta Nueva Espaha, pero tambien en las
provinciasy reinos circunstantes. Teniase asimismo p o r cierto, que ninguna navegacion o flota habia llegado a
las partes de esta Nueva-Espaha ni del Peru antes de este centenario que cumple mil y seiscientos qhos de la
encamacidn de Cristo Ntro. Redentor; y agora se dice p o r muy cierto que la flota del rey Salomon Ilego al Peru y
tambien a la isla de Santo Domingo a tomar oro para el edificio del temploP
76
that the essential boundary would be back in place.”210 Sahagun in turn redefined the
custom as the confession o f a sin, pecado. Neither confession, nor sin, are words that
equate, or explain the actual native tradition, which was preoccupied with reestablishing
the ‘proper w ay,’ and not seeking redemption. Sahagun’s presentation o f what he
transformed into confessions was fully imbued with Christian idioms and interpretations.
Sahagun fitted the very deity with whom the proper relationship needed to be
reestablished, Tezcatlipoca (Smoking Mirror), into the Christian God’s model. This was
in itself an unconscious heresy by Sahagun: “Oh our Lord, most humane, protector and aid
to all! Already you have heard the confession o f this poor sinner.”211
In Nahua terms, Tezcatlipoca was an unknowable God with deep sinister aspects.
“He was also named Moyocoyatzin, ‘Capricious Creator’, Titlacuhuan, ‘He Whose Slaves
W e Are’, [and] Moquequeloa, ‘The Mocker’.”212 In fact, when Sahagun was compiling
the information for B ook HI, about the origins o f the Gods, the informants were able to
answer his questions about the other three major Gods, Huitzipochtli, Tlaloc, and
Quetzalcoatl, and spoke o f them by telling epic stories. But when asked about
Tezcatlipoca,
the informants were unable to answer in a similar fashion about the
supreme divinity, invisible and untouchable, creator o f history but without a
history. They answered with small prayers directed to him, and with the
210IagaCleiidmnen. Aztecs: A n Interpretation. Cambridge and N ew York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. P.
52.
211 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume H. Book VI. Chapter VH. P. 76. Original wording:
“Oh Senornuestro humanisimo, amparadory favorecedor de todoslya habeis oido la confesidn de estepobre
pecador.”
212 higa Clendinnen, 1991. P. 79.
77
many names given him, [...] explanations o f these names, and with
information about the places where he was worshipped.213
Sahagun transformed this God into his image o f an omnipotent God, and translated
the indigenous experience into a Catholic confession. He used the Christian symbolism o f
the cleansing o f sins: “You, Lord, who clean the faults o f those who truly confess; Forgive
him and cleanse him, give him. Lord, the pardon and indulgence, and the remission o f all
his sins, which descends from heaven, like clear and pure water to wash all sins.”214 He
did this in spite that the festival o f Tezcatlipoca was characterized by submitting to the
sacred through “the deliberate yielding o f one’s person to ‘dirt’, as with the prohibitions o f
bathing, and most particularly the [prohibition of] washing o f the head.”215
The image o f a Tezcatlipoca as perceived by the Nahua informants show little in
common with the Catholic God’s qualities, imposed on the indigenous God by the Friar’s
Judeo-Christian categories: “The god Tezcatlipoca was believed to be a true god,
invisible, who was every where, in heaven, on the earth, and in hell, and when he was on
earth he caused wars, enmities, and disputes, from which there arose much suffering and
instability.”216 And again: “He gave to those alive poverty and misery, and incurable and
213 Alfredo-Lopez Austin. In Edmonson, 1974. P. 129.
214 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume H Book VL Chapter VC. P. 76-77. Original wording:
“[V]o,j, senor, !avals las culpas de Ios que derechamente conjiesan; [...] tenedpor Men deperdonarley limpiarle,
otorgale, senor, el perddn y la indulgencia y remision de todos sus pecados, cosa que desciende del cielo, como
agua clarisima y purisima para lavar Ios pecados.”
215 Ihga Clendinnen, 1991. P. 52.
216 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneral. Volume I. Book I. Chapter d . P .4 4 . Original wording: “El
dios llamado Tezcatlipoca era tenido p o r verdadero dios, e invisiMe, el cual andaba en todo lugar, en el cielo, en
la tierrayen el infiemo y tenia que cuando andaba el la tierra movia guerras, enemistades y discordias, de donde
resultaban muchas fatigas y desasosiegos.”
78
contagious sicknesses [...] He did as he pleased, and no one dared or could contradict him,
[...] and he gave riches to whom he pleased and poverty and misery to whom he
wished.”217
Sahagun made other compromising and equivocal transformations. He stated that
the indigenous God Quetzalcoatl, was only a man that the Indians had taken for a God:
“Although he was a man, they had him for a god, and they said that he opened the way to
the gods.”218 The Friar went into a condemnatory diatribe against the indigenous God:
They called Quetzalcoatl, who was a man, corruptible and mortal,
and who although had some semblance o f virtue, according to them, was a
great necromancer, friend o f demons, and very familiar with them, worthy
o f confusion and eternal torment, and not o f being celebrated as a god, or
adored as such.219
Fray Bernardino’s antagonistic disposition towards the Plumed Serpent,220 and by
no means limited to this one God, but applied to all Nahua deities, did not stop the Friar
from capitalizing in the ‘Retuming-God-Cortes’ myth. In Book X E , the Franciscan
promoted the myth without any signs o f disgust: “And as they arrived next to the vessels.
217 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL V o lu m e ! Book DI. Chapter H. P .2 7 7 -2 7 8 . Original wording:
“[D]a6a a Ios vivospobrezay miseria, y enfemiedades incurablesy contagiosas [...] hacia todo cuanto queriay
pensaba, y que ninguno Iepodia im pediry contradecir a Io que hacia, [...]y enriquesia a quien queriay tambien
daba pobreza y miseria a quien queria.”
218 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book L Confutacion. P. 90. Original wording:
“[A]unquefue hombre, ten ian lepordiosy decian que barria el camino a Ios dioses.”
219 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. Confutacion. P. 90. Original wording:
uLlamaron a Quetzalcoatl, el que fue hombre mortal y corruptible, que aunque tuvo alguna apariencia de virtud,
segun ellos dijeron, pero fue gran nigromdntico, amigo de Ios diablosy p o r tanto amigo y muyfamiliar de ellos,
digno de gran confusion y de etemo tormentoy no de que Iefestejasen como a dios, y Ie adorasen como a tal.”
220 Reference to the God Quetzalcoatl.
79
and saw the Spaniards, they kissed the ships in signs o f adoration. They thought that he
was the god Quetzalcoatl that returned, as they expected from the story o f this god.”221
SahagmTs authorization o f the ‘Spanish-as-Gods’ stories is suspect. Modem
scholar David Carrasco wrote: “A comment is needed concerning the references in book
12 which show Moctezuma thought Cortes was Quetzalcoatl. This extremely important
account was written decades after the events described.”222 Also, the Franciscan gathered
the information from one particular locality, Tlatelolco, from one specific social group,
with very group-specific agendas: “These elders, while clearly within the Aztec hegemony,
represented a position somewhat critical o f the Aztec elite who conquered them nearly a
century before.”223 The resulting version o f the conquest constituted a revisionist story, a
post-factum elaboration,224 at both the Sahagunian and the indigenous levels. Sahagun
started the process, through the questions he chose to ask the native informants with his
questionnaires. The indigenous elite o f Tlatelolco then followed, and it ended with the
imposition o f SahagmTs interest and categorical assumptions during the long translation
and organizing process. The Franciscan’s role on the revision served to “produce a
version in which the role o f Cortes was elevated, Spanish actions justified, and the whole
221 Firay Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume IV. Book XE. Chapter II. Pi 25. Original wording:
“[Y] como Uegaron junto a Ios navios, y vieron Ios espafioles, besaron todas las proas de Ios naos en serial de
adoracidn, pensaron que era el dios Quetzalcoatl que volvia, al cual estaban esperando en la Historia de este
dios.”
222 David Carrasco, 1982. P. 48.
223 David Carrasco. Ouetzalcoatl and the Irony o f Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition. Chicago:
University o f Chicago Press, 1982. P. 48.
224 David Carrasco, 1982. This author makes a differentiation between post-factum fabrication and post-factum
elaboration, the latter being based on some truths. Pg. 48.
80
conquest presented as providential.”225 His subsequent elaboration, and capitalization
helped him defined the superiority o f the Spanish, and hence o f his narrative by using the
Tlatelolcans’ own narrative. For these elders o f Tlatelolco, the fabrication would serve to
“expose [or rather to construct the image of] a hysterical Moctezuma’s failure o f
nerve.”226 This would not be the betrayal it seems to be at first glance. These
Tlatelolcans had been conquered by the Aztec only one hundred years earlier. Separating
themselves from Moctezuma 's failure might have been perceived as a way to reach for
some level o f hegemony.
As a Spanish male, Sahagun also sought to impose the conditions o f his
interpretation o f society, and its proper relationships, upon the N ew World. One such
condition was the transference o f the Spanish female ‘proper-social-spheres’ to the
indigenous females. In chapters thirteen to fifteen o f B ook X, in very few pages, he
defined the proper place o f the indigenous female in familiar terms and categories. The
qualities, positive and negative, that Sahagun applied to these women, were those that the
Spanish society attached to its females. Fray Bernardino described them all following the
‘if they are good’ versus the ‘if they are bad’ format. A w om an o f noble cast was worthy
o f honor, esteemed, honorable, generous, kind, humane, meek, long-suffering, and a good
governess for her family. I f she crossed those boundaries, she was negligent, conceited
225 Inga Clendinnen. "Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty Cortes and the Conquest o f Mexico. In N ew World
Encounters. GreenblatL Stephen, Ed, Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1993. P. 12.
226
DavidCarrasco9 1982. P. 48.
81
and self-absorbed, and did not respect anyone.227 The working women, las mujeres bajas
(the lower women), were good if they were hard working, strong, firm, and
knowledgeable o f her trade. They were bad if they were weak, lazy, clumsy, and not good
at her proper trade. I f a woman was a medicine woman, Sahagun’s categorization could
be most dangerous: I f good, she shared the positive qualities o f the other working
women, but if bad, Sahagun’s conclusion could have had dangerous consequences. He
claimed that she “uses witchcraft [...] and has a pact with the Devil.”228
Sahagun defined M alas Mujeres (bad women), prostitutes, adulterers,
hermaphrodites, and alcahuetas, in sensual, if highly condemnatory terms. They were
women that did not fit Sahagun’s image o f propriety. They were interested in sexuality,
and were independent in their actions. The alcahueta, a typical Spanish character, was a
trouble maker, a woman that facilitated illicit relationships, a woman who was capable o f
deceit, the Spanish version o f the Trickster. Sahagun’s description o f this social type is
very reminiscence o f the popular Spanish character La Celestina, the alcahueta o f the
227 Adjetives used by Fray Bernardino de Sahagun to describe noble women. Historia General. Volume HI. Book
X. Chapter XE!. P. 124-126. A good woman was “digna de per honrada” “estimada” “honrada” “generosa”
“bondadosa” “humana” “m ansa” “sufrida” A bad woman was “soberbia y presuntuosa, [...]yno respeta a
nadie.”
228 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume HI. Book X. Chapter XIV. P .1 2 8 -1 2 9 . Original
wording: “[U]sa hechiceria [...]y tienepacto con el demonio.”
82
Tragicomedia de Calisto y M elibea (1499).229 Sahagun wrote o f the alcahueta: “She is a
demon and has its appearance.”230
Sahagun described the good women as saintly Christians that could manage what
the Franciscan saw as their proper spheres o f domain. Bad women were ignorant o f their
proper occupations, they were sensual, and judged close to the Devil. Those were all
Sahagunian impositions. For the Nahua there was “no value placed on male or female
chastity, but rather the impulse, as in fasting and vigil, to free oneself for sacred
engagement from the distractions o f fleshy desires.”231 Sahagun’s transformations
depended upon his perception o f his own cultural categories as the only valid measures o f
reality. In his Christian interpretation o f the universe. Fray Bernardino was oblivious to
the Nahua understanding “which [...] c[a]me closer to the notion o f the dangers o f
breaching proper boundaries by improper, ignorant, or excessive human action,” 232 than
to concepts o f sin and final judgments.
Fray Bernardino dedicated little time, and few pages to the indigenous women and
their issues. This fact alone helps define his categorization o f what he considered worth,
or not worth recording. In spite that he recorded, in the “Primeros MemorialesC an
229 This Tragic-comedy is one o f the fundamental works o f the Spanish literature. It was published in Burgos in
1499. Authorship is not fully determined. It has been attributed to Fernando de Rojas, except for the beginning
that it is believed belongs to Juan de Mena or Rodrigo de Cota. It is a story o f love between a handsome young
man, and a sweet girl, that are helped in their romance by the intervention o f old Celestina. This work had
enormous success during the Spanish Golden Age. Information from Ramon Garcia-Pelayo y Gross, 1988. P.
1199.
230 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneral. Volume m . Book X. Chapter X V. P .1 3 1 . Original wording:
“[E]s un diabloy trueforma de e l ”
231 Inga Clendinnen, 1991. P. 164.
232 Inga Clendinnen, 1991. P. 164.
83
“extensive statement [...] about the activities o f boys arid girls in their respective schools
and the function o f the teachers, [he] paid little attention to such matters [in the Historia]
for he does not discuss the theme o f girl’s schools.”233 His single-minded approach,
where he had to force the Nahua world into familiar parameters, left much o f the
indigenous experiences untouched or malformed, contaminated by the Franciscan’s
stereotypes, assumptions, and his Christian-Spanish sensibilities.
The Franciscan’s treatment o f women in his writings was marginal, but when
referring to the indigenous people’s notions about their Goddesses, he simply wrote with
superiority and disdain. His attitude perhaps reflected the Catholic ambivalence between
the deification o f Mary, and the insistence on defining her worship as the Mother o f God,
as inter-mediator between humans and the Christians’ God, and on her value as a catholic
example o f proper womanhood. This ambivalence, mixed with a fear that the indigenous
people would adopt Mary’s image as the image o f their own pre-existing Mother o f the
Gods, brought Sahagun, and other Franciscans, to participate in the “Franciscan
conspiracy o f silence as to the apparition and miracles”234 o f the Lady o f Guadalupe.
Their initial, violent rejection o f the “Mariophany o f Tepeyac,”235 was firmly based on the
“fear o f seeing the Indians continuing to adore under the name Tonantzin the old Mother
o f Gods rather than the Virgin Mary.”236
233 Alfredo Lopez Austin. In Edmonson, 1974. P. 129.
234 Arthur J.O. Anderson. In Edmonson, 1974. P. 20.
235 Serge Gruzinski, 1993. P. 192.
236 Serge Gruzinski, 1993. P. 191.
84
Fray Bernardino expressed his opinion, on the deification o f females, with
particular force in the confutation at the end o f the first book:
In many things the devils deceived your ancestors and mocked
them, making them believe that women were goddesses and so they adored
them and venerated them. [...] They also believed that women who died
during their first child-birth became goddesses and they called them
Cihuateteo or Cihuapipiltin, and they adored them as a goddess. This
adoration o f women is worth so much mockery and laughter, that it is not
necessary to debate it using the sacred scriptures.237
In Sahagmfs mind there was only one acceptable way to order society. That which he
could not understand through the familiar he reduced to demoniacal, inferior, or just
simply marginalized it. Only by turning the incompatible categories into familiarnegatives, Sahagun could reach out and attempt to make graspable the fully foreign N ew
Spanish experience.
Sahagmfs Double Standards: ccLas Senates y Los Pronosticos ”
Father Bernardino, in no uncertain terms condemned and demonized what he
labeled the Arte Adivinatoria o f the indigenous Nahua. Both the Historia and the Arte are
filled with bereavement. His position in the subject o f divination was firm: “Great evil
came down upon the human race in the form o f the Devil; and this natives are in good
measure part o f him, fill o f this disease [divining arts].”238 The Devil was the enemy, and
237 FrayBem ardinodeSahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. Book I. Confutacidn. P .9 0 -9 1 . Original wording:
muchas cosas Ios diablos enganaros a vuestros antepasadosy burlaros de ellos, haciendoles creer que
algunas mujeres eran d io sa syp o r tales las adorabany reverenciaban. [...] Tambien creian vuestros antepasados
que las mujeres que morion del prim er parto se hacian d io sa sy las llamaban Cihuateteo o Cihuapipiltin, y las
adoraban como a diosas. [...] Es esta adoracion de mujeres caso tan de burlay retr, que no hay para que hablar
de la confutarpor autoridades de la Sagrada Escritura.”
238 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume H. Book V. Prologue. P. 49. Original wording: “M ai
es este que cundio en todo el humanal Hnaje [the devil]; y como estos naturales son buena parte de el, cupulos
hartaparte desta enfermedad [in reference to the divining arts].”
85
the indigenous people were under his power: “Such idolatrous people, whose fertile fruits
were only gathered by the Devil, and in his infernal fire he has them as his treasure.”239
In spite o f his attitude towards the indigenous arts o f divination, Sahagun did not
seem to have a problem in pointing out repeatedly those “sings and omens that appeared
before the coming o f the Spaniards, even before there were any news o f them.”240 Fray
Bernardino’s tone when he spoke o f these signs was completely different Sahagun used
them to solidify the Spanish, and Catholic right to the Americas. Through this willing
adoption, the prophecies became an integral part o f the N ew World’s Mythology. The
Franciscan wrote that “[t]en years before the arrival o f the Spaniards to this land, twelve
years according to others, there appeared a great comet in the sky, in the orient, that
seemed like a great and resplendent flame that sent out flashes o f fire.”241 He went on to
enumerate the eight agueros (predictions) that foretold the coming o f the Spaniards, and
then he neatly introduced the conquest.
The senates y pronosticos (signs and omens), as they could be used to support the
Catholic and Spanish claims to the Americas, did not bother the Friar. They were signs,
not o f the indigenous, idolatrous, demonic Gods, but o f his own God’s presence, the one
239 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. Prologue. P. 30. Original wording:
"[TjoMtos gentes idolatras, cuyosfrutos uberrinos solo el demonio Ios ha cogido, y en elfuego infernal Ios tiene
alesorados.”
240 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun’s Historia General. Garibay, 1956. Volume II. Book VHI Chapter VI. Pg. 291.
Original wording: “[S]ehalesy pronosticos que aparecieron antes que IosEspaholes vinieran a esta tierra, ni
hubieses noticiasde ellos.”
241 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun’s Historia General. Garibay, 1956. Volume II. Book VHL Chapter VI. Pg. 291.
Original wording: “D iez ahos antes que llegasen Ios espaholes a esta tierra, y segun otros once o doce ahos,
aparecio m gran cometa en el cielo, en la parte de oriente que parecia como una gran llama defuego muy
resplandecientey que echaba de si centellas de fuego.”
86
and only Dios. These signs legitimized Sahagunian, and Franciscan messianism.
Supporting the dream upon indigenous prophetic words gave it a new kind o f authority, o f
value. The power o f the Christian god appeared greater, and Spanish legitimacy became
hard to question when the conquered people themselves appeared to become part o f the
Cathohc D eity’s Greater Plan. These ‘allowed’ signs provided the Spanish Christian
Empire with a godly justification for conquest and colonization:
Our Lord God has (purposefully) hidden this half o f the world until
our times, when through his divine nature he decided to make it manifest to
the Roman Catholic Church, not so that the natives are destroyed and
tyrannized, but to enlighten them from the darkness o f idolatry where they
have lived, and so that they are introduced to the Catholic church, and
informed in the Christian religion so that they may reach the kingdom o f
heaven, dying in the faith like true Christians.242
Fray Bernardino wrote about the conquest with Christian fervor, abandonment,
and a strong sense o f superiority. He relished on the telling o f those first days when: “Our
Lord made many miracles in the conquest o f this land, where the door was opened for the
preachers o f the Holy Gospel so that they would enter to preach the Catholic faith to this
most miserable people.”243 H e depicted Cortes as the hero chosen, and guided by God.
242 FrayBernardinodeSahagun. HistdriaGeneral. Volume IV. Book XU. Prologo D el Autor. P .1 8 . Original
wording: “Ntro. SenorDios (a proposito) ha tenido ocultada esta media parte del mundo hasta nuestros tiempos,
quep o r su divina ordenacidn ha tenido p o r bien de manifestarla a la iglesia romana catdlica, no con proposito de
que fuesen destruidos y tiranizados sus naturales; sino con proposito que sean alumbrados de las tinieblas de la
idolatria en que han vivido, y sean introducidos en la iglesia catdlica, e informados en la religion cristiana, y
para que alcancen el reino de Ios cielos, muriendo en Iafe de verdaderos cristianos"
243 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun5s Historia General. Garibay, 1956. Volume IV. Book XE. Prologo del Autor. P.
18. Original wording: “[H\izo D ios nuestro senor muchos milagros en la conquista de esta tierra, donde se abrio
lapu ertapara que Ios predicadores del Santo Evangelio entrasen a predicar la f e catdlica a esta gente
miserabilisima.”
87
In a long eulogizing speech, Sahagun compared the conquistador to the greatest Spanish
hero o f the Reconquista, El Cid:
“It is considered certain (given the beginning, middle, and the end
o f the conquest) that our Lord ruled over this great man and great
Christian [...] so that he inspired him to do more than humanly possible [...]
In everything that happened, it seems that God inspired him in what he had
to do, as he had done on past times with the noble and holy Spanish
captain, the Cid Ruiz Diaz, in the times o f king Alonso o f the honorable
hand. Finally, as Cortes came out victorious, he did as most Christian man
and loyal gentleman to his king should do. He offered the rewards o f his
labors to his emperor king, Charles V, and wrote to the Sovereign Pontiff
asking that he send preachers o f the Holy Gospel for the conversions o f the
Indians, which was our Lords intention when he began this project.”244
The indigenous signs deserved condemnation, unless they spoke in benefit o f the
Spaniards and their God’s plan. It is surprising that the Friar so easily made this leap
given his adamant attitude about anything related to the divining arts. For the Friar, the
indigenous people’s voice was important as it served his purposes. When it did not, it was
to be eradicated. Fr. Bernardino turned the indigenous population into subjects o f
Spanish-Catholic-Franciscan action.
Sahasun The Franciscan
As a member o f the Order o f Saint Francis, Sahagun’s reasons for the creation o f
the compendium centered around several issues: Formally, he had to fulfill his superiors’
244 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun’s Historia General. Garibay5 1956. Volume IV. Book XE. Prdlogo del Autor. P.
19-20. Original wording: aTienesepor cosa muy cierta (considerando Ios principios, medios, y fines de esta
conquista) que nuestro Senor Dios regia a este gran varon y gran christiano [...] que Ie inspiro que hiciese una
cosa de mas que animosidad humana [...] En todo Io que adelantepaso, parece claramente que Dios Ie inspiraba
en Io que habia de obrar, asi como hacia en Ios tiempos pasados el Cid Ruiz Diaz, nobilisimo y muy santo capitdn
espanol en tiempo del rey Alonso de la mono honrada. [...] Finalmente, habiendo salido con la victoria [Cortes],
hizo como christianisimo varon y Jidelisimo caballero a su rey, en que luego ofrecio el precio de sus trabajos a su
rey emperadorD. Carlos V, y escribio al Sumo Pontifice que enviase predicadores del santo Evangelio para la
conversion de esta gente indiana; Io cual sumamente pretendia nuestro SenorDios en haber comenzado este
negocio.”
88
mandates. He wanted to find redemption for his share in the success o f the Devil in
reclaiming the Nahua, and he had to solve the damage done by gathering all the
intelligence necessary to fight idolatry, warning the Nahua o f their precarious situation,
and calling to action any good Christian that might help in the endeavor.
The first mandate came from the Minister General, Francisco Angelorum, who on
October 30th, 1523, ordered the first Twelve, and those “who in the future should join
[...] through the merit o f holy obedience,” to “convert with words and example the people
who do not know Jesus Christ Our Lord, who are held fast in the blindness o f idolatry
under the yoke o f the satanic thrall, who live and dwell in the Indies which are commonly
called Yucatan or N ew Spain or Tierra Firme ”245 N o price was too much to pay “with
the last end o f the world at hand [...] to gain victory [against idolatry and Satan’s
forces].”246 The Franciscans had followed their founding father’s example by coming to
the N ew World “burning with the fire o f Christ’s love, and thirsting for the palm o f
martyrdom.”247 Sahagun also had to obey the orders given to him directly, first by
Motolinia248 in the early 1540’s, and later in 1557 by Father Francisco de Toral, to gather
information on indigenous matters.
245 Partial quote from the “Orders Given to the Twelve” by Fray Francisco Angelorum, Minister General on October
30th. o f the year 1523 (Originally given in Latin). Published in Kenneth M ills and W illiam B. Taylor, Edts.
Colonial Spanish America: A Documentary History. Wilmington, Delaware: A Scholarly Resources Inc. Imprint,
1998. 48-51. P. 50.
246 “Orders Given to the Twelve” by Fray Francisco Angelorum. Kenneth M ills and W illiam B. Taylor, 1998. P. 49.
247 “Orders Given to the Twelve” by Fray Francisco Angelorum. Kenneth M ills and W illiam B. Taylor, 1998. P. 49.
248 It seems that Sahagun’s disillusionment with the veracity o f the first conversions did not allow him to give
Motolinia the same credit h e gave Toral. hi fact, in 1572, h is feelings against M otolinia would go beyond the
written word. Reflecting what scholar Ascension Leon-Portilla called, in 1993, “the dramatic end o f a friendship.”
In Ascencion H. de Leon-Portilla. “Las Primeras Biografias de Bernardino de Sahagitn.” Estudios de Cultura
89
Angelorum’s and Toral’s mandates authorized and fueled Sahagun’s work. “[I]n
the eleventh hour o f which the gospel speaks,”249 Sahagun had come to the N ew World as
a seraphic soldier o f Christ. And while the end o f the world mentality was, at large, a
direct response to the Catholic church’s crisis in Europe due to its own corruption, and
the struggles against the Reformation, for Fray Bernardino it was part o f his individual
experience. The Americas, and the indigenous population were perceived as the raw
resources for the formation o f “this N ew Church.”250
The Franciscans, filled with missionary zeal, believed themselves to be the chosen
soldiers o f God: “The Eternal Father chose [...the Order o f St. Francis] to exalt the glory
o f his Name and procure the salvation o f souls, and to forestall the ruin which threatened
the Church (and should she fall, save her and raise her to her primitive state).”251 Their
job was to prepare the way and aid in the creation o f the seat o f Christ’s reign.252
Nahuatl V. 22, 1993. Mexico: UniversidadNacionalAutonom ad e Mexico. 235-252. P .2 5 0 . Original
wording: “|E]Zfinal dramdtico de una enemistad.” Fray Bernardino denounced M otolinia to the Inquisition. This
act shows, in the words o f Georges Baudot, “the harshness that surrounded the elaboration o f the Historia General
In George Baudot. “Fray Toribio de Motolinia denunciado ante la Inquisicion p o rfra y Bernardino de Sahagun en
1572." Caravelle. Cahiers du Monde Hispanique et Luso Bresilien. Universite de T oulouse— LeM irail, 1990,
n°55, p. 13-17. A s quoted by Ascencion H. de Leon-Portilla, 1993. P. 250. Original wording: “[L]as asperidades
que rode[aban] la elaboracidn de la Historia General."
249 “Orders Given to the Twelve” by Fray Francisco Angelorran. K ennethM ills and W illiam B. Taylor, 1998. P .4 9 .
Many other’s believed the tim e predicted by the apostle John, in the B ible’s Apocalypse, w as near. Father
Bartolome de Las Casas him self referred to those times as “the eleventh hour o f the world.” Statement made by
the Dominican Father Bartolome Las Casas in his “Octavio Remedio.” Quoted from Luis N. Rivera. A Violent
R vangelism - The Political and Religious Conquest o f the Americas. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John
Knox Press, 1992. P. 59.
250 FrayBemardino deSahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 383 column I . Original wording: “[E]sfa
Iglesia nueva."
251 “Orders Given to the Twelve” by Francisco Angelorum. Kenneth M ills and W illiam B. Taylor, 1998. P .4 8 .
252 “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense, to repay every one for what he has done. I am the Alpha
and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they
may have the right to the tree o f life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and
sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” The
Apostle John allegedly quotes Jesus Christ in the Apocalypse. The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and N ew
90
Sahagun’s own Franciscan zealousness appears to have been compounded with a
sense o f personal failure. Because Fray Bernardino put down his guard against the devil
and his works, the success o f the Messianic dream, and the post-apocalyptic establishment
o f Christ’s millenarian kingdom in the Americas, were seriously compromised:
We held this information as true and as a miracle [...] and so, we
abandoned the weapons that w e brought well sharpened to fight against
idolatry, and following the counsel o f those fathers w e began to preach
moral things. After a few years, the lack o f prudence that occurred in the
foundation o f this N ew Church became evident. [And] so the N ew Church
was founded on false ground.253
While on the one hand he wrote with hope: “I can not believe that the Church o f
God will not prosper where the synagogue o f Satan has prospered so well, according to
the words o f Saint Paul: There will be an abundance o f grace where there was once an
abundance o f sin,”254 on the other he also noted: “I know for a fact that the Devil does not
sleep, nor has he forgotten the honor given to him by these natives, and that he is waiting
for the proper time to, if he can, get back to his rule.”255 In the words o f modem Sahagun
scholar John W. Keber, “a good part o f [Sahagun’s] motivation [...] was the growing
Testaments. Revised Standard Edition. N ew York and Cleveland: Collins Publishers, 1971. Revelations 22: 1215.
253 Fray Bernardino de Sahagtin. ArteAdivinatorid. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 382 column 2 - 383 column I. Original
wording: ccTuvimos esta informacidn p o r muy verdadera y milagrosa [...] y asi dejamos las armas que traiamos
muy afiladas para contra la idolatria, y del consejo y persuacion de estos padres comenzamos a predicar cosas
morales. [...] Hallose despues depocos anos muy evidentela falta que de la prudencia serpentina hubo en la
fundacion de esta nueva Iglesia. [...Y] asi esta Iglesia N uevdquedofmdada sobrefalso.”
254 Fray Bernardino de Sahagtin. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. Prologue. P. 30. Original wording: “[No]
puedo creer que la Iglesia de D ios no sea prospera donde la sinagoga de satands tanta prosperidad ha tenido,
conforme aquello de San Pablo: abundard la gracia donde abundo el delitoT
255 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneral. Volume I. Book HI. Prologue. P .2 6 9 . Original wording: “[S]e
de cierto que el diablo ni duerme ni estd olvidado de la honra que Ie hacian estos naturales, y que esta esperando
coyuntura para si pudiese volver al senorio que ha tenido.”
91
conviction that the missionary effort had failed, that early conversions had been superficial,
that idolatrous practices had continued— and that something had to be done.”256
Sahagun embarked in a war against the work o f the Devil in N ew Spain. This
seraphic soldier fought the war in several fronts. Initially, he addressed directly the Nahua
people. He warned them, vehemently, o f the errors o f their ancestral ways, and aimed to
“illuminate the knowledge o f the eternal truth, that is God, and the knowledge o f false
gods which is all a lie and invention o f the author and father o f all lies, the Devil.”257 The
Friar’s acceptance o f only one version o f experience and belief as truth was unwavering:
“You have all lived in the darkness o f infidelity and idolatry in which your ancestors left
you, as it is demonstrated in your writings and paintings, and in the idolatrous rites in
which you have lived till now.”258
The Friar wrote with superior frustration: “It is more a thing o f children without
sense that o f men o f reason. [...] Your ancestors invented other crazy notions without
limits, so much so that there is not enough paper to write them.”259 H e allowed himself
the right to put words in the mouth o f the native idolaters, who he represented in no
256 John W. Keber. Sahagun’s Psalmodia: Christian Love and Domination in Sixteenth Century Mexico. Li Eloisa
Q inonesKeber, 1994. 45-64. P .4 7 .
257 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. Book I. Confutacidn. P .8 5 . Onginal wording:
alumbrar el conocimiento de la etema verdad, que es Dios, y en el conocimiento de losfalsos dioses que son pura
mentira e invencian del au tory padre de toda mentira que es el diablo.”
258 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. Appendix to Book I. Prologue to Appendix. P .7 7 .
Original wording: “\Y\odos habeis vivido en grandes tinieblas de infidelidad e idolatria en que os dejaron vuestros
antepasados, como estd claropor vuestras escriturasy pinturas, y ritos idoldtricos en que habeis vivido hasta
ahorq.”
259 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. Appendix to Book I. Prologue to Appendix. P .9 4 .
Original wording: “Esto masparece cosa de ninos sin seso, que de hombres de razdn. [...] Otras locuras sin
cuentoyotros dioses sin numero inventaron vuestros antepasados, que ni papel ni tiempo bastaria para
escribirlas.”
92
uncertain terms: “The misfortuned idolaters said: W e erred in the way to the truth, w e
were not enlightened by justice, nor was it bom on us the sun o f intelligence.”260 Then,
the Franciscan set his god in asymmetrical contrast to the native gods:
In all written above it is clear how good and worthy o f love,
obedience, and reverence is our Lord God, protector, lord and governor o f
all things; in the same manner it is clear how evil, treacherous and liars,
abominable and cruel are the gods that your ancestors honored and adored
for such a long time.261
It appears that these emphatic speeches had the effect, if any, o f alienating Sahagun3s
intended audience. The Friar himself noted, in 1585, in the Arte Adivinatoria, that the
Nahua still had “the old faith mixed with the Catholic faith, in this time that has been
clearly seen [...] They run away from hearing the preachings, and use such frivolous
excuses that it is easy to see their wickedness.”262
Sahagun also reverted to the sharpening o f “the weapons that w e brought.”263264He
aimed to prepare, not only himself, but all the other predicadores2M to do battle against
the Devil and his idolatry: “It will be good for us to have weapons with which to come to
260 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I Book I. Confutacidn. P. 87. Original wording:
“Dicen Ios malaventurados idolatras: Erravimusin via veritatis, etc. Sapiente [...] — errado habemos en el
camino de la verdad, no nos alumbrd la Iuz de la justicia, no nos nacid el sol de la inteligencia.”
261 Fray Bernardino de Sahagtin. HistoriaGeneral. Volume I. Book I. Confutacidn. P.88. Original wording: “En
Io arriba dicho estd claro que buenoy cudn digno de ser amado, loado, obedecido y reverenciado es nuestro senor
Dios criador, senary govemador de todas las cosas; y de Io mismo parece asimismo clarisimamente cudn
malvados, traidores y mentirosos, aborrecibles y crueles son Ios dioses que vuestros antepasados adorarony
honraron tan largos tiemposC
262 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 384 column I. Original wording: “\L \a fe
antigua revuelta con laf e catolica; y ahora en estos tiempos se ha visto claro [...] que huyen de otr las
predicaciones y ponen para su excusa unas causas tan frivolas, que se entiende de muy claro su maid ad.”
263 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 382 column 2. Original wording: “[L]«s
armas que traiamos muy afiladas para contra la idolatria.”
264 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. Book HI. Prologue. P .2 6 9 .
93
his encounter.”265 As an arsenal for God, his work served to “to give more opportunity
and help to the preachers o f this N ew Church.”266 He firmly believed that the extirpation
o f idolatry depended upon his collecting o f detailed intelligence on indigenous practices:
In order to preach against these things and even to know whether
they exist, it is indispensable to know how they were used in the time o f
their idolatry. For in the absence o f this knowledge they do many
idolatrous things in our presence without our understanding; and some say,
excusing them, that these are stupidities or childish things, not knowing the
source from which they spring— which is mere idolatry, and the confessors
do not ask, or believe that such things exist, nor do they know the language
for asking them, nor would they even understand if they were told.267
In his numerous interjections, be it prologues, confutations, addresses to the reader, or
appendixes, Sahagun directly ensured that the significance o f his work, the importance o f
his goals, and o f the eschatological battle he waged, could not be m issed.268
Sahagun also articulated a call to action that was eloquent and coercive. It was so
directly aimed that it denounced any Christian who ignored it as a bad Christian deserving
o f grave punishments. Sahagun appealed “in the name o f God,” to any one who might
read his work, to disclose any knowledge o f idolatry so that it could be remedied. He
265 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book HI. Prologue. P. 269. Original wording:
“[B]ze« es que tengqmos armaspara salirle [the devil] al encuentro.”
266 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume HI. Book X. Prologue. P. 97. Original wording:
“\D]ar mayor oportwnidady ayuda a Ios predicadores de esta nueva lglesia ”
267 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. Prologue. P. 27. Original wording: iiPara
predicar contra estas cosas, y aun para saber si las hay, menester es de saber como las usaban en tiempo de su
idolatria, que p orfalta de no saber esto en nuestra presencia hacen muchas cosas idoldtricas sin que Io
entendamos; y dicen algunos, excusdndolos, que son boberias o niherias, p o r ignorar la raiz de donde salen—que
es mera idolatria, y Ios confesores ni se las preguntan, ni piensan que hay tal cosa, ni saben lenguajepara se Ios
preguntar, ni aun Io entenderdn aunque se Io digan.”
268 “B lessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written therein [in Revelations]; for the time is near.” The
Apostle John allegedly quotes Jesus Christ in the Apocalypse. The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and N ew
Testaments. Revised Standard Edition. N ew York and Cleveland: Collins Publishers, 1971. Revelations 1:3.
94
warned that if the reader did not, he would carry a great burden because it was “the
greatest o f all sins” to cover or protect idolatry. The punishment would be severe, “in this
world and the next.” Sahagun wrote: “H e who does not persecute this sin and its doers,
through licit and merited ways, can not be considered a good Christian.” 269
In 1585, the Friar still held fast to the dream, although he was also sobered by the
initial failure. He insisted faithfully on his points o f war:
The investigation and inquiry to know all idolatrous things [...] the
preaching by preachers, [...and] the third thing that is necessary to remedy
this project is that the confessors be informed o f the idolatrous rites that
they had since old. [...] The preachers must preach directly against the
gods they had and adored, who they called teteo, that they are not gods,
that they are not teteo, and it is necessary to name then by their names,
striking them and abhor them as devils enemies o f God, and enemies o f all
his creatures, and enemies o f men.270
N ot fully different from the Friar’s hero Cortes, who had enlisted the aid o f
Mesdamerican Indians to defeat the Aztec, Sahagun sough to recruit the Nahua and
Spaniards to fight the devil in the N ew World. The Nahua would join by means o f
conversion, and would be brought to the fold through the paternalistic amor caritativo
269 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. A l Lector. P. 94. Original wording:
aR uegoteporD ios vivo, a quieti quiera que esto leyeres, que si sabes que hay alguna cosa entre estos naturales
tocante a esta materia de la idolatria, des luego noticia a Ios que tienen cargo del regimiento espiritual o
temporal, para que con brevedad se remedie; y hacienda esto haras Io que eres obligado, y si no Io hicieres
encargards tu conciencia con cargos de grandisimas culpas; porque asi como este es el mayor de todos Ios
pecados, y mas ofensivo a la divina majestad, asi tambien nuestro senor Dios castiga a Ios que en el ofenden, con
mayor rigor que a ninguno de Ios otros pecadores. Y a Ios que encumbren este pecado asimismo Ios castiga con
gravisimos tormentos, en este mundoy en el otro. No se debe de tenerpor buen cristiano el que no es perseguidor
de este p\d\cado, y de sus autores, p o r medios Ucitos y meritorios.”
270 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. Icazbalceta5 1954. P .384-385. Original wording: “[L]a
investigacion e inquiricion de saber las cosas idoldtricas [...], Iapredicacion depredicadores [...y] Io tercero que
es necesario para que este negocio se remedie es que Ios confesores sepan Ios ritos idoldtricas que antiguamente
tenian estos. [...] Deben lospredicadores expresamentepredicar que Ios dioses que adorabany tenianpor dioses,
que ellos llamaban teteo, que no son dioses, que no son teteo, y es menester nombrarlos a todos p o r sus nombres,
fulmindndolos y abomindndolos p o r diablos enemigos de D ios y enemigos de todas sus criaturas, y enemigos de
Ios hombres.”
95
(charitable love) that the Franciscans would offer, after their baptism, “so that they do not
commit idolatry later.”271 The Spaniards would join to fulfill their Christian obligation.
Perhaps, as another tool o f God, such as Sahagun believed Cortes to be, the Friar held on
to the Messianic dream, waiting for one more miracle. The Christian God had already
proven himself to the Franciscan in “in this greatest and most important o f endeavors,”272
during the conquest. Then, “God freed him [Cortes] and many o f his men, miraculously,
from the hands o f their enemies.”273 Perhaps the Christian God would also aid the
seraphic soldier in his service.
271 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdMnatoria. Icazbalceta5 1954. P .3 8 4 . Onginal wording: “[P]ara que no
idolatren despues”
272 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume IV. Book XE. Prologue. P .1 8 . Qnginal wording:
“[E]Ve negocip muy grande y muy importante.”
273 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneral. Volume IV. Book XE. Prologue. P .1 9 . Onginal wording:
uMilagrosamente Ie Hbro Dios a el [Cortes] y a muchos de Ios suyos de las manos de sus enemigos.”
96
CHAPTER 4
NATIVE PARTICIPATION
Some Very Specific Nahua Voices
SahaguiTs compendium opened the doors for the Nahua participants to narrate
their side o f the story, and to partake in the making o f the new historiography as they had
once participated in the construction o f the old. It provided Nahua participants with an
opportunity to mold the narrative around their interests; interests that were grounded in
their pre-existing categories and their own point-of-perspective as the vestige o f the
indigenous elite. It was fitting within the Nahua tradition for the elite to decide “what to
recover o f the past and why.”274 The Nahua pre-Hispanic historian-priest was a specialist
who “gather[ed] and explain[ed] the past to serve the interests o f the hueytlatoani, or
highest ruler.”275
SahagmTs role as the priest-recorder o f Nahua traditions became the
logical substitute for the historian-priest. His compendium depended completely on the
information that the Nahua elite saw fit to record. The Nahua participants retained some
level o f access to power by responding to SahagmTs request to aid in the production o f
the Historia, and as subjugated people they faced several issues. The need to retain
cultural cohesion and to make a coherent sense o f themselves and their experiences could
only be accessed during these early stages through the pre-existing indigenous
274 Enrique Florescano, 1994. P. 39.
275 Enrique Florescano, 1994. P. 30.
understanding o f the universe, including their cyclical concept o f time. It is more than
plausible that given the Nahua cyclical interpretation o f events, they interpreted their
subjugation as temporary. Things would eventually be as they once were. In fact, a
proverb from Sahagun’s compilation states: “Another time it will be like this, another
time things will be the same, some time, some place. What happened a long time ago, and
which no longer happens, will be again, it will be done again, as it was in far-off times.”276
They also attempted the integration, through their pre-existing concepts, o f the new faces
o f the supernatural. In other words, following pre-Hispanic tradition, they adopted the
Christian God as they perceived him. Finally, they made a bid for personal and cultural
survival through sophisticated subversive strategies, such as the retrospective writing o f
history and the historiographical redemption o f an empire lost, the assimilation o f aspects
o f the outsider’s world, such as the assimilation o f Sahagun himself, and even the willful
giving o f misinformation to the outsider. Perhaps the most significant aim o f the
participating Nahua elite was to establish the legitimacy o f their pre-Hispanic status and its
continuity in the new system. As James Lockhart clearly explained, in a pre-Hispanic
model where there existed a “general lack o f clearly drawn polarities,”277 one clear
division did exist; there was a “sharp distinction between pilli or noble and macehualli or
commoner.”278 This distinction was important enough to be “one o f the [...] foundations
276 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Florentine Codex. A s quoted by Enrique Florescano, 1994. P .2 8 . A lsoin A lfred o
Lopez Austin. Cuervo humano e ideolostia. 2 vols. M exico City: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico,
1980. Vol. I. P. 65.
277 James Lockhart, 1992. P. 440.
278 James Lockhart, 1992. P. 441.
98
o f Nahua society and consciousness. ”279 This fundamental rank definition formed the
basis for the sort o f information that the Nahua elite gave about themselves and about
others, where they placed emphasis, and how much information they dedicated to
particular subjects: The Nahua elite vindicated their social status, and made the
compendium function in registers that made sense from within pre-Hispanic frameworks.
The historical record served to validate, and perhaps clarify for the outsider, the upper
class’ definition o f self, community, and history, with religion being an intricate part,
inseparable from the whole.
Young Nahua students, such as Antonio Valeriano o f Azcapotzalco, Pedro de San
Buenaventura, Martin Jacobita, and Andres Leonardo,280 often nameless in
historiographical works, mediated between Sahagun’s questionnaires and the Native
principales. Sahagun did not choose those principales. They were selected by specific
groups o f the Native elite upon Sahagun’s request:
He [Sahagun] assembled the lord and principal people o f the town,
communicated to them what he wished to do, and asked them to bring to
him capable and experienced people with whom they [Sahagun and the
Native aids] could meet [...] After taking some time to decide, they
brought him ten or twelve principal elders that could give him explanations
to what he asked.281
279 James Lockhart, 1992. P. 441.
280 M iguel Leon-Portilla5 1994. P. 14 and 19.
281 Joaquin G. Icazbalceta5 p. 345. Original wording: “Juntos el senary Ios principales del pueblo, Ies comunico Io
que deseaba hacer, y Ies pidio que Ie trajesen personas hdbilesy experimentadas con quienes pudiesen
conferenciar [...] Despues de tomarse alg&n tiempopara resolver, Ie trajeron diez o dope ancianosprincipales que
podlan darle razon de Io que preguntaba.”
99
The role o f the Nahua elite groups in the choosing o f the people to whom Sahagun, the
gramdticos colegiales (grammarians), and the escribientes (scribes) would have access,
allowed them to have a measure o f control in the process that created the encyclopedia. It
also allowed the Central M exico indigenous elite to re-negotiate power relations. It was
their selected elders, and no others, that Sahagun could interview. The elite, invited by
Fray Bernardino, secured a powerful position for themselves. Consistent with pre-existing
traditional forms, the Nahua elite kept for themselves the positions o f first editors, and
censurers o f information. In pre-Hispanic times “the Mexica society was severely
controlled by censorship:”282
The conservator was in charge
o f the songs o f the gods,
o f all divine songs.
So that nobody erred,
he watched with care
to teach the people
the divine songs in the neighborhoods.283
Given the fact that the Nahua elite took time to conferenciar (confer) in the decision
process o f providing aid to Fray Bernardino, it would be simplistic to assume that their
traditional ways would be forgotten, and they would not use their opportunity for joint
elite participation in the selection o f the information to be shared and recorded.
It was not all the Nahua who participated, nor all the elite. The information was
gathered from three specific areas: Tepepulco, Mexico-Tlatelolco, and M exico-
282 Enrique Florescano, 1994. P. 39.
283 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Bitos, sacerdotes, v atavios de Ios dioses. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional
Autonoma de M exico, 1958. Commonly known as authored by Los Informanted de Sahagun. P. 93.
100
Tenochtitlan. It was these specific groups o f Nahua male leaders that worked with the
Franciscan, and whose agency expressed itself through their choice o f informants, and
selection o f material to be shared with the Friar. Fray Bernardino, who initiated the
process, wrote about the steps taken in Tepepulco and Tlatelolco:
In that town I had gathered all the principal people with their lord,
who was called D iego de Mendoza. I asked them to grant me access to
knowledgeable people o f experience with whom I could talk, and who
could explain the things I asked o f them. [...] Another day, the lord and
his principal people came and having made a very solemn speech...they
assigned me as many as ten or twelve leading elders. They told me I could
communicate with them, and they would give me answers to all that I
would ask them [...] They gave me all the matters w e discussed in pictures,
for that was the writing they employed in ancient times. And the
grammarians explain them in their language, writing the explanation at the
bottom o f the page.284
[In Tlatelolco] They pointed to eight or ten principal people, chosen
from the whole, very capable in their language and their old things, with
whom, together with four or five students o f the College, [...] all that I
brought written from Tepepulco was edited, verified, and to which
additions were made.285
Sahagufrs account does not imply a level o f passivity on the part o f the Nahua
participants. To the contrary, the Nahua elite, when faced with Sahagufrs request for
284 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book H. Prologue. P .1 0 5 -1 0 6 . Original wording:
“En el dicho pueblo [Tepepulco] hize juntar todos Ios p rin cip a ls con el senor del pueblo, que se Uamaba don
Diego de Mendoza. [..M lespedi que me dieran personas hdbilesy experimentadas, con quien pudiese p la tica ry
me supiesen dar razon de Io que Ies preguntase. Elios me respondieron que se hablaria cerca de Io propuesto, y
que otro dla me responderian. [...] Otro dia vinieron el senor con Iosprincipales, y hecho un solemneparlamento,
como ellos entonces usaban hacer, senaldronme hasta diez o doce principales ancianos, y dijeronme que con
aquellospodia comunicary que ellos me darian razon de todo Io que Iespreguntase. [...] Todas las cosas que
conferimos me las dieron porpinturas, que aquella era la escritura que ellos antiguamente usaban, y Ios
gramdticos las declararon en su lengua, escribiendo la declaracion al pie de la pintura.”
285 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book II. Prologue. P. 106. Original wording: “[hi
Tlatelolco] me seiialaron hasta ocho o diez principales, escogidos entre todos, muy hdbiles en su lenguay en las
cosas de sus antiguallas, con Ios cuales, con cuatro o cinco collegiales, [...] se enmendo, declard, y ahadio todo Io
que de Tepepulco traje escrito.”
101
information, took their time in responding, made a speech, granted permission, and offered
those who would give answers. N one o f these were passive actions. In fact, the elite
group’s agency never stopped manifesting itself, and began to affect Sahagun long before
the compendium’s result, the Historia, was anywhere in sight. It began with the
persistence o f the indigenous people’s attachment to their belief systems, which
demonstrated the independence o f their agency, and forced Sahagun to dedicate much o f
his adult life to what became his obsession: The eradication o f those indigenous beliefs
that he perceived as idolatrous so that he, and his cultural partners, might then establish
their own belief system and maintain control. Subsequently, Nahua participants’ agency
continued to express itself through the elite’s direct participation in the development o f the
compendium, and the insertion o f their own agendas.
The Tlatelolcan elite “represented a position somewhat critical o f the Aztec elite
who conquered them nearly a century before.”286 This colored the information,
particularly their version o f the Conquest, and arguably, it helped create the image o f a
weak Moctezuma: “When Moctezuma heard what the messengers said, how the Spaniards
very much wanted to see him, he was filled with such anguish that he though he should
run away or hide,”287 and again, “he was worried, filled with terror and fear.”288 After all.
286 David Carrasco. Ouetzalcoatl and the Irony o f Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition. Chicago:
University o f Chicago Press, 1982. P. 48.
287 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume V. Book XE. Chapter IX. P .3 5 . Original wording:
“Cuando oia Mocthecuzoma la relacion de Ios mensajeros, como Ios espafioles preguntaban mucho de el, y que
deseaban mucho de verle, angustidbase en gran manera, penso de huir o esconderse.”
288 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume V. Book XE. Chapter VEI. P .9 5 . Original wording:
“\E]staba preocupadp; Ileno de terror, de m iedo”
102
it was the Aztec proper that lost the empire. Distance from the losers might have helped
the Tlatelolcans in their attempts to re-negotiate power relations with the outsiders. Much
o f the information gathered in Tlatelolco, the Merchant Capital, also came from a
particular sub-group o f the elite: The Pochtecas, or organized merchant class.289 The
rather specific nature o f this group helped present the biased voice o f people who “were
active within the upper echelons o f the governmental [and economic] system[s]; it says
relatively little about the situation o f the thousands o f pipiltin who had little connection
with the imperial court.”290 The specialized nature o f the group also valorized their
particular version, their particular perspective, o f the Nahua world over others. It also
provided for the self-congratulatory definition o f their particular class, and o f this group’s
rightful claim to leadership:
After the merchants, having fought for four years, conquered the
Province o f Ancihuac, [...] the most important among them said: Oh
Mexican merchants! Already our Lord Huitzilopochtli, God o f War, has
done his job by helping us to conquer this Province. [...] When they
arrived to M exico, [...] they headed straight for the house o f the lord
Ahuitzotzin [...] Having done this, one o f them started to speak, telling
him: Our lord, [...] here at your feet w e have place the bounty because
your uncles the pochtecas who are here risked our heads and our lives, [...]
and although w e call our selves merchants, w e are more like captains and
soldiers that with dissimulation went out conquering.291
289 Alfredo Ldpez Austin. InEdmonson, 1974. P. 140.
290 EdwardE-Calnek. The Sahagun Texts as a Source o f Sociological Information. Bi Edmonson, 1974. P .1 9 0 .
291 Fray Bernardino de SaBagun. Historia General. Volume HI. Book BI. Chapter H. “B e como Ios mercaderes
comenzaron a ser tenidospor senoresy honrados como tales.” (How the merchants began to be held as lords and
honored as such.) P. 17-18. Original wording: “Despues que Ios mercaderes, peleando p o r espacio de cuatro ahos,
conquistaron laprovincia de Andhuac [...] tomo la mono el mas principal de ello syd ijo : jOh mercaderes
mexicanos! Ta nuestro sehor Huitzilopochtli, dios de la guerra, ha hecho su oficio en favorecemos en que
hayamos conquistado estaprovincia. [...] 7 como hubieron llegado a Mexico, [...]fueronse derechos a la casa del
sehor Ahuitzotzin [...] Habiendo hecho esto, comenzo uno de ellos a hablar al sehor diciendole: ‘Sehor nuestro
[...] aqui en tupresencia hemospuesto e lprecio, porque tus tios lospochtecas que estamos aquipusimos nuestras
cabezasy vidas a riesgo, [...] que aunque nos llamamos mercaderesy Ioparecemos, somos capitanesy soldados,
que disimuladamente andamos a conquistar.”
103
The information gathered in Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco gave greater value to
merchant traditions, celebrations, and beliefs: “The informants [were] cultured and
educated men o f pre-Hispanic Mexico. However, the importance they g[a]ve to
Y[i]acatecuhtli [Guiding God, God o f Travelers], to travel, and to feasts given to the
organized merchants make one suppose that at least some o f them belonged to the
merchant’s guild.”292 These ten to twelve elders were not representative o f the entire
culture, and can hardly be the source o f a Universal, or General History. The interest o f
their participation resides on their particularity, not on their alleged representative status.
The versions that they represented did not reflect the interests o f the commoners, o f
women, o f children, or o f many o f the specialized priests who had died in the hands o f the
Spaniards. They reflected the interests o f elitist groups o f men, and in TenochtitlanTlatelolco, o f a particular upper class, the merchants. But this was not entirely new for
the Nahua, after all, “the recording and reading o f the past were the exclusive knowledge
o f the ruling class.”293
The information given to the Franciscan was particularly affected by the absence o f
an important informing group, the priests who held sacred knowledge. The copious
materials in religious matters could have only come from the perspective o f novices or
from the public perspectives o f the ceremonies and celebrations. As author Inga
Clendinnen noted in her 1991 study on the Aztec: “Few priests, easily identifiable as they
292 Alftedo Lopez Austin. In Edmonson, 1974. P. 124.
293 Enrique Florescano, 1994. P. 41.
104
were, survived the phobic hatred o f the Spanish conquerors, and the destruction o f their
finely articulated ecclesiastic structure must have cast those few survivors into a social and
cognitive void. Priestly doings were concealed from outsiders.”294
The Integration o f N ew Aspects o f the Supernatural and o f N ew Systems
The indigenous people o f the Americas conceptualized the universe in absolutely
different modes from those o f the Spanish. Since the pre-Hispanic “conceptions o f the
divine was not governed by the principles o f exclusive monotheism, [...] the Christian
image was integrated into the native field.”295 It seemed natural for the Kahua to simply
adopt the new God, or Gods into their already busy pantheon. It can be argued that the
claims o f Catholic monotheism might have not appeared as clear cut for people who had
just begun to conceptualize Christian mythology. The tripartite Christian God, Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, plus the Virgin Mary and the host o f saints created an impression o f
a more plural cosmology. Plurality would then appear familiar to the multicultural people
o f N ew Spain. It was within Nahua tradition to incorporate the Gods o f the victor:
“[Vjictory was prima facie evidence o f the strength o f the victor’s god. One expected a
conqueror to impose his god in some fashion, without fully displacing one’s own; the new
god in any case always proved to be an agglomeration o f attributes familiar from the local
pantheon and hence easy to assimilate.”296 To add to the apparent Christian polytheism.
294 Inga Clendinnen, 1991. P. 129-130.
295 Serge Gruzinski, 1993. P. 188.
296 James Lockhart. The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural Historv o f the Indians o f Central M exico. .
Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1992. P, 203.
105
the different approaches to evangelization, and even the differences between “the
philosophical traditions o f the Franciscans and Dominicans,”297 created the illusion o f
shared multiplicity. This multiplicity was a familiar concept for the Nahua.
In 1539, Don Carlos Ometochtzin, Cacique o f Tezcoco, “exposed a plural world
view in speeches to his town.”298 His exposition would eventually cause him to be put on
trial, and executed by the Inquisition. In those speeches Ometochtzin explained Nahua
acceptance o f plurality and their use o f Christian internal differences to validate the
continuation o f their own:
Consider that the friars and the secular clergy each has its own form
o f penance; consider that the Franciscan friars have one manner o f doctrine
and one way o f life and one dress; and the Agustinians another; and the
Dominicans another; and the secular clergy another...and it was also like
this among those who kept our gods, so that the ones from Mexico had
one way o f dress and prayer... and other towns had another; each town had
its own way o f sacrificing.299
Sahagun noted how the indigenous people, after having received the sacrament o f
baptism, would declare that they believed in the Catholic tripartite God: “God the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost,”300 while “inside they do not stop considering their gods as
gods, or lending them service, offerings and celebrations.”301 Although the Franciscan
was limited to an either or proposition, where the Nahua either converted truthfully or
297 JoseRabasa. “Franciscans and Dominicans Under the Gaze o f TIacuilo: Plnral-World D welling in an Indian
Pictorial Codex.” Morrison Library Inaugural Address Series. Number 14. 1998., P. 22.
298 JoseRabasa, 1998. P. I.
299 JoseRabasa, 1998. P. I.
300 FrayBem ardinodeSahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. hilcazbalceta, 1954. P. 383 column I. Original wording: “Dios
Padre, Hijo y Espiritu SantoP
301FrayBem ardinodeSahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. hilcazbalceta, 1954. P. 383 column 2. Original wording: “[E]7i
Io interior no dejan de tener a sus dioses p o r dioses, ni de hacerles servicio, ofrendas y fiestas. ”
106
lied, for the indigenous people the adoption these new Gods was part o f their tradition:
“And in this manner they multiplied the gods amongst themselves, taking those who were
settled the gods o f those who arrived, and those taking the gods o f the ones who were
settled.”302 It was a strategy for survival, not so much to please the Spanish, but as a way
to access the potency o f the new Gods. They might be able to help them face the new
situation, their new burdens and diseases brought to them also by the Spaniards. The
attempt to integrate Christianity to establish a proper relation with the new aspects o f the
Supernatural, did not imply an abandonment o f the old ways. The familiar Gods had still
their places and purposes. Their significance was braided with the people's identities and
histories. Sharing their importance with Sahagun might ensure the survival o f the old
ways in the face o f persecution by the Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion. The threat was very
real. There can be no doubt, given the Nahua traditional use o f messengers and
trade/communication networks,303 and given the fact that Mexican friars had received
information,304 that the Nahua elite was aware o f events such as the auto de fe that
Franciscans Ciudad de Rodrigo and Diego de Landa conducted in Yucatan (1562).
There, more than 4,500 Indians were tortured, and 158 had lost their lives “as a direct
302 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. In Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 383 column I. Original wording: “[Y]
asi se multiplicaron Ios dioses entre ellos, tomando Ios que estaban ya poblados el dios de Ios que llegaban, y
estos el dios de Ios y a poblados.”
303 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun wrote in Book XE about Mocthecuzoma, who sent messangers to keep him informed
o f the Spaniards movements. In one section the M exica leader is quoted saying to his messangers: “Id con prisa y
no os detengqis” (Go fast, and do not delay) Volume IV. Book XE. Chapter IV. P .2 9 ..
304 In her thoughtful study Ambivalent Conquests. (1987) Inga Clendinnen wrote about Father Francisco de Toral5
who arrived as the first Bishop o f Yucatan in 1562. The struggles between Toral5 who tried to stop the iEegal
suffering o f the Indians perpetrated by the Provincial D iego de Landa and his friars, reached both Mexican Church
authorities and Spain’s CouncU o f the Indies. P. 72-111.
107
result o f the interrogations,”305306after the Franciscans discovered that they continued to
adore their Gods in secrecy.
In his 1564 work, now known as E l Libro p e r dido de las Pldticas o Coloquios de
Ios Doce PrimerosMisioneros de M exico™ Sahagun recorded the alleged response o f
the indigenous elders to the first Twelve, in 1524. In it, they expressed their connection to
their Gods:
It is best, our lords, to act on this matter very slowly, with great
deliberation. We are not satisfied or convinced by what you have told us,
nor do w e understand or give credit to what has been said o f our gods. It
gives us anguish, lords and fathers, to speak in this way. Here present are
the lords charged with governing the kingdom and republics o f this world.
All o f us together feel that it is enough to have lost, enough that the power
and royal jurisdiction have been taken from us. As for our gods, w e will
die before giving up serving and worshipping them. This is our
determination; do what you will. This will serve in reply and contradiction
to what you have said, w e have no more to say, lords.307
In Totecuyoane, the Nahuatl document that records the answers given to the first
Twelve in 1524, the elders move from “self-abasement and apparent humility [...] slowly
and inexorably [...] to a passionate defense o f their past beliefs.”308 The following is an
excerpt o f the translation by Gordon Brotherson, published in 1992, from his compelling
work on Native American literature:
305 Inga Clendiimen5 1987. P 76.
306 Charles E. Dibble. TheNahuatlizationofChristianity. InEdmonson, 1974. 225-233. P .2 2 9 .
307 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. aEl Libro perdido de las Pldticas o Coloquios de Ios Doce Primeros Misioneros de
Mexico, ” (N ow kept in the Vatican Archives). The Lords and Holy Men o f Tenochtitlan Reply to the Franciscans,
1524. Kenneth M ills and W illiam B. Taylor, 1998. P .2 2 . There are questions about the origin and significance
o f this speech recorded decades after the event. Leading Sahagunian scholar M iguel Leon-Portilla has concluded
that it is was crafted to aid evangelization, but offers “an authentic glimpse o f the Aztec religion and vision o f the
world and response to Spanish colonization.” A s quoted in Kenneth M ills and W illiam B. Taylor, 1998. P. 19.
308 Gordon Brotherson. Book o f the Fourth World: Reading the Native Americas Through Their Literature.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. P .3 1 5 .
108
So, as w e stand here,
w e see, w e address,
the one through whom everything lives,
the night, the Wind,
whose representatives you are.
And w e have felt the breath, the word
o f our lord the Omneity,
which you have brought with you.
The speaker o f the world sent you because o f us.
Here w e are, amazed by this.
You brought his book with you, his script,
heaven’s word, the word o f god.
You say
that w e don’t know
the Omneity o f heaven and earth.
You say that our gods are not original.
That’s news to us
and it drives us crazy.
It’s a shock and it’s a scandal,
for our ancestors came to earth
and they spoke quite differently.309
The Nahua, even as they integrated Christianity, did not forsake their Gods. In
fact, Sahagun does not seem to have been aware o f the internal argument the Nahua
managed to make part o f the compendium. The image is compelling: Sahagun stood on
one side, convinced o f the superiority and rightfulness o f his vision, and with self-absorbed
eloquence condemned the Nahua belief system, even mocking it at times. In his comer,
Sahagun lectured the Nahua about the fallacy o f their Gods: “It follows clearly that
Huitzilopochtli, in not a god, nor is Tldloc, nor Quetzalcdatl^ Cihuacoatl is not a goddess.
309 Totecuyoane quoted and translated by GordonBrotherson, 1992. 49-50. P. 50.
109
Chicomecoatl is not a goddess.”310 Fray Bernardino continued Ms One-by-one
condemnation and ended by saying: “They are all demons,” and he further validated Ms
statement with scriptural evidence, wMch said that “all the gods o f the gentiles are
demons.”311 On the other side, the Nahua informants, with delicate subtlety, presented
and defended their Gods. The argument is evident, even witMn the context o f the MgMy
contaminated Spamsh version. The elders lectured the Friar in turn, defending their
attachment to those they held as T eotl312 “The god called HuitzilopocM i [...] was very
robust, o f great strength, and war-like [...] He was like a live fire and was feared by Ms
enemies [...] because o f Ms strength and dexterity in war, the Mexicans held Mm in great
esteem.”313 Again: “The god Tezcatlipoca was held as true god, invisible, who was every
where, and they said that only he understood the rules o f the world.”314 One after another
the Nahua explained their Gods and their sigmficance, giving enough details to fill most o f
the first volume with their information, stories, and celebrations. Indigenous attachment
to their Sacred did not, and could not have ceased. It was imbedded in Nahua identity.
310 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. Confutacion. P. 86. Original wording:
"'Siguese aqui claramente que Huitzilopochtli, no es dios, ni tampoco Tldloc, ni tampoco Quetzalcoatl; Cihuacoatl
no es diosa, Chicomecoatl no es diosa.”
311 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. Book I. Confutacion. P .8 6 . Original' wording:
"\T]odos son demonios: Asi Io testifica la Sagrada escritura diciendo, omnes diigentium demonia, que quiere
decir todos Ios dioses se Ios gentiles son demonios.”
312 “[Q]ue es dios.” Who is god. Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume m . Book X. P .2 0 9 .
313 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. P. 43. Ongiiial wording: "'Este dios llamado
Huitzilopochtli [...]/» e robustisimo, de grandesfu erza sy muy belicoso [...] era comofuego vivo muy temeroio a
sus contrarios [...] p o r sufortalezay destreza en la guerra, Ie tuvieronp o r mucho Ios mexicanos.”
314 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book I. P. 44. Original wording: “El dios
Tezcatlipoca era tenidoporverdadero dios, e invisible, el cual andaba en todo lugar [...]• y decian el solo ser el
que entendia en el regimiento del mundo.”
HO
Sahagun’s perception o f deceit was simplistic: “They completely lost the faith that was
preached to them and returned to their old idolatry.”315
The Nahua elite was not responding to the Friar and his culture as inferiors looking
from the bottom up. That perspective o f the indigenous peoples was Sahagun’s own
limitation. Concurrent with their pre-Hispanic social experience,316 these elite groups
continued to look at the world around them from their superior placement in the Nahua
hierarchy. Even when subjection was not anything new for those held under tribute to the
pre-conquest “Confederacy o f Anauk,”317 or when acceptance o f subjugation was a
Spanish perception, initially, at least in this Nahua elite’s perspective, “an ethnocentric
feeling o f superiority was also an element”318 in Nahua perception o f the outsider:
“Warriors o f Tlatelolco, now is the time! Who are these savages?”319
The Nahua inspired the compendium and then used it to their advantage following
traditional Nahua elitist pre-encounter rules. Both sides o f the struggle were firmly rooted
in a mutual lack o f ability to step out o f those categorical assumptions each held as truth.
The “contradictory interests and objectives [...produced] a cascade o f compromises.
[...There] emerged individual and collective experiences that mixed interpretation with
315 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume HI. Book XI. Chapter XHL D eT odosLos
Mantenimientos. P. 360. Original wording: “\P]erdieron del todo la Fe que Iesfue predicada, y se volvieron a las
idolatrias antiguas.”
316 One must here point out the interconnectedness o f the Nahua cosmological spheres (such as religious, political,
and social) separated only under the Euro-Westem microscope.
317 Alicja Iwanska. The Truth o f Others: A n Essay on Nativistic Intellectuals in M exico. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Schenkman Publishing Company, INC., 1977. P. 57.
318 James Lockhart. 1992. P .4 4 5 .
319 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume IV. Book X E Chapter XXXTV. P. 148. Original
wording: “jGuerreros de Tlatelolco, ahora es cuando...! ^Quienes son esos salvqjes?”
I ll
improvisation.”320 The ‘double-mistaken-identity’ logic allowed each side to perceive the
other as functioning within familiar parameters. It expressed itself continuously, as each
side attempted to make the new experiences coherent, and as each side imagined itself in
control o f the production o f the Historia. As scholar Michael de Certeau argued in 1984:
“They metaphorized the dominant order: They made it function in another register.”321
Sahagun complained bitterly about the Nahua transformation o f the Spanish-Catholic
sacred into their own:
And they already had Tommtzin, and Tocitzin, and Telpochtli who
in the outside resemble, or are made to resemble Saint Mary, Saint Ann,
and Saint John the Evangelist, or Batiste; inside the people [...] it is clear
that it is all the same [...] In a concealed manner they venerate and make
offerings to the idols, hiding them in the celebrations that the church has
for God and his Saints.322
The indigenous people saw the Spanish from their own ‘point-of-perspective’ and
assimilated them into their own pre-existing patterns. In the eighth chapter o f Book III,
titled De las costumbres que se guardaban en el Calmecac (O f the Customs Kept at the
Calmecac'), there is an eloquent description, by Sahagun, o f the Nahua Ministers who
worked in the pre-Hispanic indigenous school: “The ministers o f the gods pledged vow s
o f chastity, not having carnal knowledge o f woman, and they ate moderately, and did not
320 Serge Gruzinski, 1993. P. 282.
321 M ichel de Certeau. In the Practices o f Everyday Life. Steven F. Rendall, Trans. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984. P .3 1 -3 2 .
322 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. H istoriaGeneral Volume D l Book XI. Apendice: Adicidn Sobre Supersticiones.
P. 354. Original wording: “[Y]a tenian Tonantzin, y Tocitzin, y al Telpochtli, que exteriormente suena, o Ies ha
hecho sonar a Santa Maria y a SantaAna, y a San Juan Evangelista, o Bautista, y e n Io interior de la gente
popular [...] esta claro que no es sino Io antiguo [...] paliadamente se hace reverenciay ofrenda a Ios idolos, con
disimulacion de las fiestas que la Iglesia celebra a D io sy a sus Santos.”
112
tell lies, and lived devoutly, fearing god.”323324 This description is hardly conflicting with
that o f a friar. The Nahua could coherently integrate and understand the Franciscans,
aided with a bit o f ‘double-mistaken-identity’ and cross-talking, as the new teachers at the
new Calmecac. The teacher-friars were easily digested in Native pre-existing definitions.
The apparent coincidence o f the similarity between Ios ministros de Ios dioses (the
ministers o f the Gods) and the friars, and between E l Colegio Imperial de Santa Cruz de
Tlatelolco™ and the Calmecac, served to provide the illusion that, beyond some necessary
adaptations, the ‘Other(s)’, the friars to the indigenous people, and vice-versa, was not
altogether unlike the ‘S e lf, that the world was still familiar. The Nahua informants
explained the value o f their Calmecac, and they explained it in terms perfectly digestible to
a Franciscan friar: “In the house o f the Calmecac there were very good customs,
doctrines, exercises, and rough life, and there were not any sort o f shameful or
reprehensible thing, nor any affront to the customs used by the ministers o f the idols that
were educated there.”325 Furthermore, the Nahua elite established the right o f their
offspring to the school: “The house where the noble lords were raised,”326 and again:
“And if the boy was the son o f the lord o f principal person [...] and if he was o f a proper
323 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book H . Chapter VET. P. 307. Original wording:
“/L Jos ministros de Ios idolos tenian voto de vivir castamente, sin conocer a mujer camalmente, y comer
templadamente ni decir mentiras y vivir devotamente.y temer a dios.”
324 The Imperial School o f de Holy Cross o f Tlatelolco. Information found in Leon-Portilla, 1994. P. 13.
325 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. Book HI. P .3 0 3 . Original wording: “[E]m la casa
del Calmecac habia buenes costumbres, y doctrinasy ejercicios, y dsperay casta vida, y no habia cosa de
desvergiienzas, ni reprehension, ni afrenta ninguna de las costumbres que alii usaban Ios ministros de Ios idolos,
que se criaban en aquella casa.”
326 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume I. Book HI. P .3 0 4 . Original wording: “|L]a casa [...]
donde se crian Ios senores nobles.”
113
age to live and remain in the house o f the Calmecac, they left him there under the care o f
the priests and ministers o f the idols, who raised him and taught them all customs.”327
Given the perceived similarities between the Colegio and the Calmecacj this right should
be properly extended to the new system, and the Franciscans’ initial selection o f elite
children as pupils validated such assumption.
The similarities, the mixture o f imperfect-yet-consequential coincidences, provided
no guarantee that there were any true meeting points, in fact, most o f the time there were
not. Still, the apparent coincidences lulled both sides o f the exchange into a sense o f
familiarity, into the survival o f pre-existing categories. Sahagun saw exercises in deceit:
“it is nothing but a great idolatrous He.”328 However, the Nahuas were simply maintaining
their modes o f thinking and interpreting events in their world, including the outsiders,
from within their “[pre-]existing images and categories.”329 Indigenous people’s agency
was not predicated on European constructions but on their own.
Sahagun insistently recorded that there was an obvious and powerful continuance
o f indigenous practices. Even as those practices became accommodated, or altered, or
perceived as such by the outsider, the attachment o f the Nahua to their gods did not end:
“I f any one thinks that these things are so well forgotten and lost, [...] I know for certain
327 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneral. Volume I. Book HI. P .3 0 5 . Original wording: “7 si el
muchacho era hijo del senor o principal [...]^ V eraya de edad conveniblepara viviry estaren la casa de
Calmecac, luego Ie dejaban alll en poder de Ios sacerdotes y ministros de Ios idolos, para criarley ensenarle
todas las costumbres.”
328 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. In Icazcalceta3 1954. P. 384 column 2. Original wording: “ [L]o
cual no es sino gran mentira idoldtrica.”
329 Olivia Harris. “The Coming o f the White People: Reflections on the Mythologization o f History in Latin
America.” Kenneth M ills and W illiam B. Taylor, 1998. P .3 4 -4 5 .
114
that the Devil does not sleep nor is he forgotten.”330 Indeed the Franciscan recorded the
reason for the failure o f the conversions without, seemingly, understanding it:
According to the old custom that they had, when foreign people
came to live near by [...] They took as god the god o f those who has just
arrived. [And] in that manner they multiplied their gods amongst
themselves [...]. In the same manner, they were inclined to take as god the
god o f the Spaniards; but not to abandon their old ones.331
Applying the theory o f ‘double mistaken identity,’332 it is possible to see how the
initial appearance o f complete and profound conversion was built upon imperfect, yet
consequential, coincidences that allowed each side to imagine a connection, a “superficial
compatibility.”333 It is highly questionable that the initial, or any o f the conversions that
Sahagun had as false were bom out o f deceit, from a “conspiracy that they had, among the
principal people and priests, to receive Jesus Christ among their gods as one o f them.”334
They were the result o f indigenous pre-existing categories being applied to new
experiences.
The Nahua traditions had meaning o f their own, and so, they remained meaningful
in spite o f Spanish intrusions. Ritual and cultural indigenous voices rose loudly enough to
330 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume I. Book HL Prologue. P .2 6 9 . Original wording: “[S]z
algunopiensa que estas cosas estdn tan olvidadasyperdidas, [...] se de cierto que el diablo ni duerme ni estd
olvidado.”
331 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Arte Adivinatoria. In Icazcalceta, 1954. P. 382 column 2 and 383 column I.
Original wording: “[C\onforme a la costumbre antigua que tenian, que cuando venia alguna gente forastera a
poblar cerca [...] tomabanpor dios al dios que tralan Ios recien llegados. [...Y] asi se multiplicaron Ios dioses
entre ellos [...]. D e esta manera se inclinaron con facilidad a tom arpof dios.alD ios de Ios espanoles;pero no
para que dejasen Ios suyos antiguos.”
332 James Lockhart, 1985. P. 465-482.
333 Walden Browne, 1996. P.109.
334 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. ArteAdivinatoria. In Icazbalceta, 1954. P. 382 column 2. Ongmal wording:
“[C]onspiraci6n que ellos habian hecho entre si losprincipalesysdtrapas de recibis a JesucristO entre sus dioses
como uno de ellos.”
I
115
create ‘tension cracks’ between the miUenarist first twelve Franciscans and Sahagun, and
within Sahagun himself. “Sahagun, one o f their number [Franciscans], complained bitterly
in his Arte Adivinatoria (1585) o f the gullibility o f his predecessors and the precious time
that had been lost listening to their advice.”335 The indigenous reality produced the
disintegration o f the self-congratulatory, self-deluded, and s e lf interested claims o f the first
Franciscans:
About the preaching o f the Gospel in these parts, there is much
doubt if it has been preached before or it has not. I have always held the
opinion that the Gospel was never preached to them, because I never have
found anything that alluded to the Catholic Faith, but to the contrary, and
everything is so idolatrous that I can’t believe the Gospel was ever
preached to them.336
Meanwhile, the Nahua elite were not up to anything new. In fact, they had always
“periodically reconstructed the interpretation o f the past [...] and adjusted it to the present
situation.”337
The Assimilation o f Sahagun
The Nahua voice expressed itself in yet another way. The Native informants
assimilated Sahagun, and used him as a vehicle o f instruction for the young (Euroclaimed-hispanized) elite. As Miguel Leon-Portilla established:
335 Walden Browne, 1996. P. 104. The author paraphrases Sahagun in his Arte Adivinatoria, as printed in Joaquin
Garcia Icazbalceta’s, Bibliografla mexicana del siglo XVI. Agustin Millares Carlo, Edt. Mexico: Fondo de
Cultura Economica, 1981. 376-387.
336 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume HI. Book XI. Chapter XEE: D e Todos Los
Mantenimientos. P. 358. Original wording: “Acerca de la predication del Evangelio en estas partes, ha habido
mucha duda si han sido predicadas antes de ahora, o no; y y o siempre he tenido opinion que nunca lesfue
predicado el Evangelio, porque nunca jamas he hallado cosa que aluda a la Fe Catolica, sino todo Io contrario, y
todo tan idoldtrico que nopuedo creer que Ies hqya sido predicado el Evangelio en ningun tiempo.”
337 Enrique Florescano, 1994. P. 40.
116
Without being conscious o f it,... Sahagun w[as] reenacting the
ancient indigenous procedure followed in the transmission o f
knowledge...Oral tradition anchored in the pictographic books was the
form o f transmitting the ancient word, the songs, the historical accounts,
the prayers, and so on, both to the young people in the ancient schools and
to the friars.338
Sahagun, as a member o f the faculty at the Colegio de Tlatelolco, which mirrored
the Nahua’s own educational institution, the Calmecac, was the perfect vehicle for the
Nahua elite to record, and make permanent their vision, within the framework o f the
colonial system. The Nahua elders achieved access and opportunity by assimilating
Sahagun, banking on the power o f his role as teacher at the Colegio. They could re­
educate their young, who were exposed to the traditional knowledge through their roles as
translators, interpreters, and scribes o f the Historia. The elders could find out about the
intricacies o f the dominating system through those same youth, and they could re-establish
their authority over the elite offspring by establishing for them the relevance o f their social,
religious and cultural positions. Sophisticated means o f subversion and pre-existing
categories mixed in the Nahua expression, validated the independent status o f their
cultural constructs, and their agency. The ‘voices-less-often-heard’ continued to establish
their own discourse.
The re-education o f the young was particularly important, not only to be able to
pass down the indigenous traditions, but also to repair the damage done by Sahagun
himself and the other Friars. They had trained those boys, as Fray Bernardino explained in
the Relacion del Autor, digna de ser notada, in B ook X, “to destroy the idolatrous
338
M iguelLedn-Portilla3 1994. P. 16.
117
rites.”339 To accomplish said extirpation o f idolatry through the boys, the Friars would
send the Nahua youths, as a Franciscan police force, to break down celebrations, and
punish the participants. The technique was successful enough as to create a deep gap
between the boys and their people:
The people gained such fear o f those boys raised with us that after a
few days it was not necessary to go with them, or to send many [...] just
sending only ten or twenty they were able to capture and tied all those in
the celebrations [...]. even if there were one hundred or two hundred. In
this manner many idolatrous things were destroyed, in such way that no
one dared do anything idolatrous in public, nor in any other possible
way.340
The Colegio, in fact, proved to function in tw o registers. On the one hand, it aided
the missionary efforts, and on the other, it acquired the reputation o f being a “source o f
heresy.”341 There was a chilling example o f the success o f the re-education o f the elite
Nahua youth, back into traditional modes: “An ex-student [of the Colegio], a chief, Don
Carlos Chichimectecotl o f Texcuco, was discovered seeking to inculcate certain heretical
doctrines in his associates. He was brought before the Inquisition and was the first victim
o f the Holy Office to be burned in M exico.”342 D on Carlos’ story proves the enduring
quality o f the Nahua attachment to their pre-Hispanic ways, in spite o f traditional
339 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. Historia General. Volume HL Book X. Relacion del Autor Digna de Ser notada.
P. 163. Original wording: “ [P]ara destripar Ios ritos idoldtricos.”
340 FrayBem ardinodeSaliagun. HistoriaGeneral. Volume HI. Book X. Relacion del Autor Digna de Ser notada.
P. 163-164. Original wording: aFue tan grande el temor que toda la gentepopular cobrd de estos muchachos que
con nosotros se criaban, que despues depocos dlas no era menester ir con ellos, ni enviar muchos [...] que
enviando diez o veinte de ellos prendlan y ataban a todos Ios de la fiesta [...] aunquefuesen Hen o doscientos, y de
esta manera se destruyeron las cosas de la idolatria, que nadie en publico ni de manera que se pudiese saber
osaba hacer nada que fuese de cosas de idolatria.”
341 Charles S. Branden. Religious Aspects o f the Conquest o f M exico. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University
Press, 1930. P. 149.
342 Charles S. Branden, 1930. P. 149.
118
historiographical tendencies to view the elite’s young as acculturated, carrying what James
Lockhart called: “the implication that an individual or group is taking on a new culture, all
o f it, ignoring the possibility o f cultural retention or the crucial question o f
convergences.”343
Indigenous Sophisticated Strategies
Another mode o f Nahua expression in Sahagun’s compendium was represented by
the choices made by the Native principales on what they would disclose to Sahagun, and
what they would not. It is difficult to find the silences, particularly in the Spanish version,
but the indigenous people were perfectly capable o f sophisticated strategies. One example
o f such withholding policies is included in Robert Ricard’s study The Spiritual Conquest
o f Mexico:
Moreover, when Mexico City was occupied for the second time
[1521], the Indians carried o ff the five principal idols o f the great temple
and took them to the house o f an Indian named Miguel, who kept them for
ten days. They were soon collected again and taken to a place which he,
even under torture, declared he did not know. Indeed, they were so
carefully hidden that, in spite o f minute investigations, it was impossible to
find them, and their resting place today is still unknown.344
The indigenous capacity to actively participate in the construction o f
historiography, finds evidence in the Aztec account o f the conquest edited by Miguel
Leon-Portilla. In this account, the Aztec lords decided to erase their old history to make
343 James Lockhart, 1992. P .4 4 6 .
344 Quoted from Francisco de Burgoa’s Geogrdphica Descripcion de la Parte Septentrional, del Polo Artico de la
America, y Nueva Iglesia de la America de las Indias Occidentales, y sitio astrondmico de estas Provincias de
PredicadoresdeAntequeraValledeOaxaca..., ff. 168, v°- 169 r°. M exico, 1674. Found in Robert Ricard’s The
Spiritual Conquest o f Mexico: A n Essay on the AnostoIate and the Evangelizing Methods o f the Mendicant Orders
in N ew Spain: 1523-1572. Lesley Byrd Simpson, Trans. Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1966. P .2 7 4 .
119
room for a new one. “In the new version, recorded in a number o f extanct ducuments, the
Aztec claimed to be descended from the Toltec nobility:”345
They preserved an account o f their history,
but later it was burnt,
during the reign o f Itzcoatl.
The lords o f Mexico decreed it,
the lords o f Mexico declared:
“It is not fitting that our people
should know these pictures.
Our people, our subjects, will be lost
and our land destroyed,
for these pictures are full o f lies...”346
The indigenous elite made the same claim in the Historia General. “It is enough to say a
bit more about said Toltecs, and that is that all those who speak clearly the Mexican
language are their descendants.”347
This sort o f sophisticated construction o f identity had survived the conquest, and
manifested itself when given the opportunity. SahagmTs compendium provided just such
opportunity. The examples cited above present an image contrary to that o f the voiceless
people often portrayed. Their subjection to an outside power was a reality, their
perceived voicelessness, or lack o f sophisticated, strategic thinking and responses were
not. Those Eurocentric self-serving images only served to perpetuate ‘inferior-superior’
relationships, between Indians and Europeans. However, for the Nahua, the ‘inferior-
345 M iguel Ledn-Portilla, E d t The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account o f the Conquest o f M exico. Expanded and
Updated Edition. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. P. xxxviii.
346 M iguel Ledn-Portilla, Edt., 1992. P. xxxviii.
347 FrayBem ardinodeSahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume M. Book X. P .1 8 9 . Origmal wording: “Resta decir
otro poco de Ios dichos toltecas, y es que todos Ios que hablan claro la lengua mexicana, que Ies llaman ndhuas,
son descendientes de Ios dichos toltecas.”
120
superior’ relationships had little to do with the outsiders. The construction o f descent
from the Toltec valorized the Nahua over other people, it provided them with ancient
rights. The descriptions o f the Toltec, clearly and in no uncertain terms, created a most
distinguished image o f their claimed ancestors:
And said Toltecs were so curious that they knew all sorts o f
mechanic trades, and in every one they were the top and best artisans [...]
they were knowledgeable [...] So capable in the natural astrology [...] that
they were the first to have a time count [...] they were so wise and
knowledgeable that they knew the stars in the heavens and had named them
[...] they were good men and were attached to virtue because they did not
lie [..] Enough it is to say [that the Nahua] are descendants o f said
Toltecs.348
Given the Nahua rank consciousness, what today one might call Nahua ego­
centrism, or sense o f superiority, was still more specific. It did not refer only to the
Nahua-Toltec relationship, and the constructed separation between Nahua and non-Nahua.
It applied to internal class distinctions as well. The pilli-macehualU separation was
apparent, not only because o f the asymmetrical amount o f information given to the upper
class, but also through direct compartmentalization. In the information about the
celebrations offered when a baby was bom, interpreted by Sahagun as baptism, the
separation was clear:
The lords, and principal people, and merchants and rich men, every
one in his way, celebrated and invited many people. [...] That happened
amongst the lords, principal people, merchants, and rich men, but the poor
348 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. HistoriaGeneraL Volume HI. Book X. Chapter X XBt. P. 187-189. Original
wording: “Y tan curiosos eran Ios dichos toltecas que sabian casi todos Ios qficios mecdnicos, y en todos ellos
eran unicosyprim os oficiales [...] eran de buen conocimiento [...] tan hdbiles en IaAstrologia Natural [...] que
ellosfueron losprimeros que tuvieron cuenta [...] eran tan entendidosy sabios que conocian las estrellas de Ios
cielosy las tenianpuestos nombres [...] eran buenos hombres y allegados a la virtud, porque no decian mentiras.
[...] R estdecir [...que Ios nahuas] son descendientes.de Ios dichos toltecas.”
121
and lower people made their celebrations as poor and rustic people, who
have little, and know little, and offered flowers o f little value.349
Certainly, the Nahua world, and by extension the indigenous world, was affected
by the actions o f Spain and its representatives. Certainly, there were many repercussions.
In the religious arena “many were left without direction, nepantla. Only reduced [and not
destroyed] the triumph o f the Native priests and w ise men made possible the hiding, and
partial preservation o f this under the appearance o f the new rites and beliefs.”350
Althrmgh in the use o f the Nahuatl term neplanta, as ‘without direction’, the colonial
discourse satisfies only itself. “[T]he concept o f neplanta, neither here nor there, neither
in the ancient order nor in the Christian, can also be understood in terms o f a-not-beingreaUy-convinced-of-the-necessity-of-dwelling-in-only-one-world.”351 Sahagun’s
involvement, and various levels o f indigenous participation validate arguments about the
complexity o f events.
349 Fray Bernardino de Sahagmi. HistoriaGeneral. Volume I. Book IV. Chapter XXXVH. P .364-365. Original
wording: “[L]o.s senores y principales, y mercaderes y hombres ricos, cada uno segun su manera, hacta convitey
convidaba mucha gente [...] Esto acontece entre Ios senoresy principales, y mercaderesy hombres ricos; pero la
gente bajaypobre hace sus convites com epobresy rusticos, que tienen p o c o y saben poco. y dan flares depoco
valor.”
350 M iguel Leon-Portilla. “Testimonies Nahuas Sobre la Conquista EspiritualT Estudios de Cultura Ndhuatl.
M exico City, D.F., Mexico. V. 11, 1974. 11-36. P .3 3 . Original wording: hubo ciertamente conversiones...,
muchos se quedaron sin rumbo nepantla...Solo menguado [y no destnndo] triunfo de Ios sacerdotesy sabios
nativosfue hacer possible el occultamiento y la preservacion parcial de Io propio bqfo la appariencia de Ios
nuevos rito sy creencias.”
351
Jose Rabasa, 1998. P. 23.
122
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION
The encounter exchanges reflected in Sahagurfs compendium constituted a
polyphony, that even though may have achieved harmonized moments was nevertheless,
as a testament to its nature, intricately chaotic due to its lack o f symmetry, and due to Fray
Bernardino’s internal struggles, and his external conflicts with the colonial system o f
which he was a part. Fray Bernardino’s and the Nahua participant’s texts, and others such
as these, have the ability to show that the conquest, and its aftermath, were equivocal,
contradictory, ambivalent, and complex processes that involved many peoples, most o f
whom were not members o f the European Imperial cast. The indigenous people were not
the flat surfaces upon which Europe wrote history, but they were people with
sophisticated and distinct cultural constructs o f their own, complex languages and
historical recording processes that were not limited always to oral histories. They were
people with serious attachments to their gods and to their traditions.
Sahagun’s voice often spoke loud enough to preclude him from hearing anything
except his own monologue, or a sort o f directed dialogue. His voice, as one o f the voices
o f the victor, carried throughout the texts. The Friar’s apostolic dream never did fully
coalesce. However, the information gathered, after a period o f darkness arose as precious
information. It reached the present as a record o f the encounter between Sahagun and the
Nahua participants. It told, not only o f indigenous matters, pre-Conquest memoirs, Nahua
123
elite’s historical revisions, and rank strategies, but it also challenged the present’s image o f
the Conquest itself by showing the struggles involved in the evangelical project, the
internal dissension between the Church’s representatives, and the inner struggles that
arose when the tw o worlds collided. In spite o f the fact that Fray Bernardino’s work was
contaminated by his own impositions, for someone o f his time, he “followed [...] the most
rigorous and demanding methods in his study.”352 Bhs impositions on themselves provide
illuminating knowledge about the conflicted nature o f his experience-near participation
with the people o f the N ew World.
The Nahua elite also made itself heard, as it becomes clear to anyone who chooses
to step away from Eurocentrism. The poorest o f the poor, women, and other groups had
more difficulty, since their case was only represented by others, often in. minimalists
descriptions. Still, the Nahua remained V oiced’, and they expressed themselves in ultraEuropean modes, in Native modes, with all their multiplicity. In an excersice in
transculturation,353 they used European opportunities such as that one presented by
Sahagun’s compendium.
Only recently, the indigenous people’s voices and versions o f history have begun
to resound among scholars and activists. However, still today the dialogue is internal and
field specific. The value o f Sahagun’s four hundred year old texts resides in the potential
352 Alfredo Ldpez Austin. “The Reserach Method o f Sahagun: The Questionnaires.” Sixteenth Century Mexico:The
Work o f Sahagun. Munro S. Edmonson, Ed. A School o f American Research Book. Albuquerque: University o f
N ew M exico Press, 1974.
353 Mary Louisse Pratt, 1992. P. 6. Pratt defines transculturation as a “phenomenon o f the contact zone.” It is the
dynamic process through which “subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted to
them by a dominant or metropolitan culture.”
\
124
trickle down effect o f its information into main stream society.
The information he
recorded may reach out to the common people and begin to adjust the stereotypes
imposed on indigenous people, and the historic assumptions that still today function to
subjugate those people imagined as the vanquished, the voiceless, those who somehow
vanished. The works o f scholars like Miguel Leon-Portilla, Muhro Edmonson, Arthur
J O. Anderson, Thelma D. Sullivan, Alfredo Lopez Austin, Angel Maria Garibay K., Inga
Clendinnen, and Charles Dibble stand at the beginning o f the process o f transforming
popular perceptions by using Sahagun’s works. Translations such as the one written by
Garibay o f Fray Bernardino’s Historia, and texts such as Leon-Portilla’s publication o f
indigenous versions o f the Conquest, in his 1962 and 1992 The Broken Spears: The Aztec
Account o f the Conquest o f Mexico, and Inga Clendinnen’s 1991 publication o f her study
The Aztec: An Interpretation, together with a series o f essays by Austin, Anderson,
Sullivan, and Dibble, among others, in Edmonson’s collection Sixteenth Century Mexico:
The Work o f Sahagun, all using material gathered by the Friar, have made the indigenous
voices more available than before to scholars, students, and interested member’s o f the
public. Sahagun’s works in this venture are priceless.
As Leon-Portilla wrote: “[A] few remarkable missionaries, particularly Bernardino
de Sahagun [...], undertook to gather up whatever they could o f indigenous literature.
[...His] major accomplishment was to save a great many o f the old songs and narratives
that were still faith fully remembered after the Conquest.”354 The translations from
354 M iguel Leon-Portilla. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account o f the Conquest o f M exico. Boston: Beacon Press,
1992. P. xlvi-xvlii.
125
Nahuatl sources would not be possible without Sagahun5s and a few o f his
contemporaries’ Nahuatl studies. His knowledge still makes him an invaluable source for
those trying to access the pre-Hispanic indigenous experience, and those seeking to
understand the changes and accomodations made by the Nahua. That specific knowledge
can function to break down Eurocentric popular myths, and to promote further study o f
the self-representations o f the ‘voices-less-often-heard.5
Sahagiin5S encyclopedic work, in spite o f Sahaguntine355 contamination,
unintentionally allowed particular aspects o f the indigenous world to represent themselves
because the building o f the compendium depended on the recruitment o f indigenous
helpers and informants. The Friar’s agendas and feelings about the Nahua, as conflicted
and equivocal as they were, somehow coexisted, not only within the man, but with the
Nahua elite’s own agendas, without common agreement. Those divergent expressive
desires managed to coalesce into the Historia, while each side arguably missed each other
in the exchange. Fray Bernardino’s work, and the indigenous participation can only be
understood by accepting the multiplicity and the ambiguity o f the exchange. Its
significance is well rooted on the unintended, and perhaps inadvertent dialogue that was
bom, both between the Franciscan and the Nahua, and between the sixteenth Century and
today.
The strange dance between Sahagun’s voice and the Nahuas’, where seemingly
each side missed the steps the other made, introduced a process that functioned at levels
355
James Lockhart; 1992. P. 582.
126
made up o f individuals and small communities. The Conquest was more complex than the
grandiose machinations o f an omnipresent, all-powerful empire made up o f homogenous
Europeans. The conquered were not just a two continent (plus its isthmus) wide tribe o f
unified aborigines: The Pan-Indians.
Sahagmfs compendium showed how in the meeting
o f worlds with little, if anything, in common, participants scrambled to understand, to see
as familiar what was not. In the process, they mistook each other in what James Lockhart
called, ‘double mistaken identity.’356
Sadly, the exchange was asymmetrical, and although each side effectively affected
and changed the other, the disproportionate attrition rates among the indigenous
population, “the general dominance o f the Spaniards, and the fact that they came in
sufficient numbers to create a viable”357 society, eventually created a huge group o f
dispossessed people in their own homeland. Their dispossession has endured through
time and manifests itself today in their generally poor living conditions, their lack o f access
to power, the violation o f their human, traditional property and cultural rights, and thenappropriation as the class o f people, still defined today under Aristotelian principles, who
should properly do the jobs that the Euro-Westeners do not wish to do.
Sahagun, adopted by modem scholars, and the Nahua voices, translated by
specialists, have the power to transcend time and break the stereotypes that define
indigenous social, economic, and political reality.
The Conqueror was not a providential.
356 James Lockhart. The Nahuas After The Conquest: A Social and Cultural History o f the Indians o f Central M exico,
Sixteenth Century Through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. P .4 4 5 .
357 James Lockhart. P. 435.
127
self-asserted hero, and the indigenous people were not savages, but the representatives o f
multicultural perspectives, and a set o f cosmologies like no other the W est had ever know.
128
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Anderson, Arthur I. 0 . “Sahagun’s Doctrinal Encyclopedia.” Estudios de Cultura
Ndhuatl. Mexico City, D.F., Mexico. V. 16, 1983. P .109-122.
- Angelorum, Francisco. “Orders Given to the Twelve.” Colonial Spanish America: A
Documentary History, Kenneth Mills and William B. Taylor, Edts. Wilmington,
Delaware: A Scholarly Resources Imprint, 1998.
- Barthes, Roland. “The Discourse o f History.” Structuralism: A Reader. Michael
Lanek3Edt. PeterW exler3Trans. London: 1970.
- Baudot, George. The Last Years o f Fray Bernardino de Sahagun (1585-90): The Rescue
o f the Confiscated Work and the Seraphic Conflicts. New Unpublished
Documents. Sixteenth Century Mexico: The Work o f Sahagun. Munro S.
Edmonson, Ed. Albuquerque: University o f N ew Mexico Press, 1974. P. 165187.
- Blaut, TM. The Colonizer’s Model o f the World: Geographical Diffusionism and
Eurocentric History. N ew York: The Guilford Press, 1993.
- Branden, Charles S. Religious Aspects o f the Conquest o f Mexico. Durham, North
Carolina: Duke University Press, 1930.
- Brotherson, Gordon. B ook o f the Fourth World: Reading the Native Americas
Through Their Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
- Browne, Walden. “When Worlds Collide: Crisis in Sahagun’s Historia Universal de las
Cosas de Nueva Espana.” Colonial Latin American Historical Review. Spring
1996. P. 101-149.
- Bourdieu, Pierre. Social Space and Symbolic Power. In Other Words: Essays Toward a
Reflexive Sociology. Matthew Adamson, Trans. Standford: Standford University
Press, 1990.
_____________ _
iF ray Toribio de Motolinia denunciado ante la Inquisicidn por fray
Bernardino de Sahagun en 15721" Caravelle. Cahiers du Monde Hispanique et
Luso Bresilien. Universite de T oulouse—LeM irail3 1990, n°55. P. 13-17.
129
__________________ - Language and Symbolic Power. John B. Thompson, Ed. Gino
Raymond and Matthew Adamson, Trans. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1991.
- Calnek, Edward E. “The Sahagun Texts as a Source o f Sociological Information”
Sixteenth Century Mexico: The Work o f Sahagun. Munro S. Edomnson, E dt
Albuquerque: University o f N ew Mexico Press, 1974. P .189-204.
- Carrasco, David. Quetzalcoatl and the Irony o f Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the
Aztec Tradition. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1982.
- Carro, Venancio. The Spanish Theological-Juridical Renaissance and the Ideology o f
Bartolome de Las Casas. Bartolome de Las Casas in History: Towards an
Understanding o f the Man and His Work. Juan Friede and Benjamin Keen Edts.
D e Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971. P .235-277.
- Certeau, Michel de. In the Practices o f Everyday Life. Steven F. Rendall, Trans.
Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1984.
- Clendinnen, Inga. Ambivalent Conquests: Mava and Spaniard in Yucatan. 1517-1570.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
________________-The Aztec: An Interpretation. Cambridge and N ew York: Cambridge
University Press, 1991.
__________
- “Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty”: Cortes and the Conquest o f Mexico.
N ew World Encounters. Greenblatt, Stephen, Ed. Berkeley: University o f
California Press, 1993.
- Dibble, Charles E .. “The Nahuatlization o f Christianity T Sixteenth Century Mexico:
The Work o f Sahagun. Munro S. Edomnson, Edt. Albuquerque: University o f
N ew Mexico Press, 1974. P. 225-233.
- D ’Olwer, Lluis Nicolau. “Fray Bernardino de Sahagun (1499-1590).” Historiadores
de America 9. (Mexico City) Institute Panamericano de Geografia e Historia,
1952. P. 155-170.
- Edmonson, Munro S. Ed. Sixteenth Century Mexico: The Work o f Sahagun.
Albuquerque: University o f N ew M exico Press, 1974.
- Florescano, Enrique. Myth, Memory, and Time in Mexico: From the Aztecs to
Independence. Albert G. Bork, Trans. With the assistance o f Kathryn R. Bork.
Austin: University o f Texas Press, 1994.
130
- Friede, Juan and Benjamin Keen, Edts. Bartolome de Las Casas in History: Towards an
Understanding o f the Man and His Work. D e Kalb: Northern Illinois University
Press, 1971.
- Garcia, Jesus Bustamante. Fray Bernardino de Sahagun: Una Revision Critica de Ios
Manuscritos v de su Proceso de Composicion. Mexico: Universidad Nacional
Autonoma de Mexico, Institute de Investigaciones Bibliograficas, Biblioteca
Nacional y Hemeroteca Nacional, 1991.
- Garcia, Ramon Pelayo y Gross. Pequeno Larrouse Ilustrado. Marsella and Mexico:
Ediciones Larrouse, 1988.
- Garibay, Angel Maria, Edt. ccHistoria General de las Cosas de Nueva Espana: Escrita
po r Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun Franciscanoy fundada en la documentacion en
lenguamexicanarecogidapor Iosm ism osnaturales” 4 Volumes. Mexico City:
Editorial Porrua, 1956.
- Greenblatt, Stephen. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder o f the N ew World.
Chicago: The University o f Chicago Press, 1991.
- Gruzinski, Serge. The Conquest o f Mexico: The Incorporation o f Indian Societies into
the Western World. 16th-18th Centuries. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993.
- Harris, Olivia. “The Coming o f the White People: Reflections on the Mythologization o f
History in Latin America.” Colonial Spanish America: A Documentary History.
Kenneth Mills and William B. Taylor, Edts. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources,
Inc., 1998. P. 34-45.
- Icazbalceta, Joaquin Garcia. Bibliografia Mexicana del Siglo XVI: Catalogo Razonado
de Libros Impresos en Mexico de 1539 a 1600. Agustin Millares Carlo, Ed.
Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1954. P. 327-387.
- Iwanska, Alicja. The Truth o f Others: An Essay on Nativistic Intellectuals in M exico.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: SchenkmanPublishing Company, INC., 1977.
- Keber, John. “Sahagun’s Psalmodia: Christian Love and Domination in SixteenthCentury M exico.” Chipping Awav on Earth: Studies in Prehispanic and Colonial
Mexico in Honor o f Arthur I 0 . Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. Eloise
Qinones Keber, Edt. Lancaster: Labyrinthos, 1994. P .4 5 -6 4 .
131
- Leon-Portilla, Ascencion. ccLas Primeras Biografias de Bernardino de Sahagun ”
EstudiosdeCulturaNdhuatl. V. 22, 1993. Mexico: Universidad Nacional
Autonoma de Mexico. P. 235-252.
- Leon-Portilla, Miguel. ccSignificado de la Obra de fra y Bernardino de Sahagun”
Estudios de Cultura Novohispana. 1:13-28. 1966.
__________________ - “Testimonios Nahuas Sobre la Conquista Espiritual.” Estudios de
CulturaNdhuatl. Mexico City, D.F., Mexico. V .l l , 1974. P. 11-36.
__________________ - The Problematics OfSahaguh: Certain Topics Needing
Investigation. Sixteenth Century Mexico: The Work o f Sahagun. Munro S.
Edmonson, Ed. Albuquerque: University o f N ew Mexico Press, 1974. P. 240241.
___________ - The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account o f the Conquest o f
M exico. Expanded and Updated Edition. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.
______________
- “Sahagun’s Early Years in Tlatelolco.” Chipping Away on Earth:
Studies in Prehispanic and Colonial M exico in Honor o f Arthur J. 0 . Anderson and
Charles E. Dibble. Eloise Qinones Keber, Edt. Lancaster: Labyritithos, 1994. P.
13-20.
- Lockhart, James. “Some Nahua Concepts in Postconquest Guise.” History o f European
Ideas. Vol. 6, N o. 4. P. 465-482, 1985.
__________________ - The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History o f
the Indians o f Central M exico. Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 1992.
- Lopez Austin, Alfredo. The Research M ethod o f Sahagun: The Questionnaires.
Sixteenth Century Mexico: The Work o f Sahagun. Munro S. Edomnson, Edt.
Albuquerque: University o f N ew M exico Press, 1974. P .115-120.
- Menchu, Rigoberta. I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Elisabeth
Burgos-Debray, Ed. Ann Wright, Trans. N ew York: Verso, 1983.
- Mills, Kenneth and William B. Taylor, Edts. Colonial Latin America: A Documentary
History. Wilmington, Delaware: A Scholarly Resources Inc. Imprint, 1998.
132
- Pagden5 Anthony. Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination: Studies in
European and Spanish-American Social and Political Theory 1513-1830, N ew
Haven and London: Yale University Press5 1990.
- Paz5 Octavio. The Labyrinth o f Solitude: Life and Thought in M exico. Lysander Kemp5
trans. N ew York: Grove Press5 ESTC., 1961.
- Phelan5 John Leddy. The Millenial Kingdom o f the Franciscans in the N ew World.
Second
Revised Ed. Berkeley: University o f California Press5 1970.
- Pratt5Mary Louise. Imperial Eves: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and
N ew York: Routledge5 1992.
- Quinones Keber5 Eloise5 Edt. Chipping Awav on Earth: Studies in Prehispanic and
Colonial Mexico in Honor o f Arthur J O. Anderson and Charles Dibble. Susan
Schroeder and Frederick Hicks5 Assistants. Lancaster, California: Labyrinthos5
1994.
- Rabasa, Jose. Inventing America: Spanish Historiography and the Formation o f
Eurocentrism. Norman and London: University o f Oklahoma Press5 1993.
._________________ - “Franciscans and Dominicans Under the Gaze o f Tlacuilo: PluralWorld Dwelling in an Indian Pictorial Codex.” Morrison Library Inaugural
Address Series. Number 14. 1998.
- Revelations. The H olyBible: Containing the O ld and the New Testaments. Revised
Standard Edition. N ew York and Cleveland: Collins Publishers, 1971.
- Ricard5Robert. The Spiritual Conquest o f Mexico: An Essay on the Apostolate and the
Evangelizing Methods o f the Mendicant Orders in N ew Spain: 1523-1572. Lesley
Byrd Simpson5 Trans. Berkeley: University o f California Press5 1966.
- Rivera5Luis N. A Violent Evangelism: The PoUtical and Religious Conquest o f the
Americas. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press5 1992.
- Sahagim Bernardino de. Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espaha: Yfundada
e'n la documentacion en lengua mexicana recogida por Ios mismos naturales.
Angel Maria Garibay K. Edt. Tomo I. B ook I. Mexico City: Editorial Porrua5
1956.
133
____________________ - Arte Adivinatoriat Bibliografia Mexicana del Siglo XVI: Catalogo
Razonado de Libros Impresos en Mexico de 1539 a 1600. Joaquin Garcia
Icazbalceta. Agustin Millares Carlo, Ed. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica,
1954. P. 327-387.
___________________ - “E7 Libro perdido de las Pldticas o Coloquios de Ios Doce
PrimerosMisioneros de Mexico.” Selection published under the title “The Lords
and H olyM en o f Tenochtitlan Reply to the Franciscans, 1 5 2 4 ” Kenneth Mills
and William B. Taylor, Edts. Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History.
Wilmington, Delaware: A Scholarly Resources Inc. Imprint, 1998,
Calendario mexicano, latin oy Castellano. MS 1628 bis: folios 96112. Folio 105. Biblioteca Nacional, Mexico.
_____________________________________________ -
- Sell, Barry D. “All the W ayto Guatemala: Sahagun’s Sermonario o f 1548.” Chipping
Away on Earth: Studies in Prehispanic and Colonial Mexico in Honor o f Arthur J.
0 , Anderson and Charles Dibble. EloiseQ inonesK eber5Edt. Lancaster:
Labyrinthos, 1994. P. 37-44.
- Sevilla-Casas, Elias. Western Expansion and Indigenous People: The Heritage o f Las
Casas. The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1977.
- Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak.” Marxism and the
Interpretation o f Cultures. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, Edts. Urbana,
111., 1987. P .271-313.
- Sullivan, Thelma D. TheKhetoricalOrations, or Huehuetlatolli, Collectedby Sahagun.”
Sixteenth Century Mexico: The Work o f Sahagun. Edmonson, Munro S. Ed.
Albuquerque: University o f N ew Mexico Press, 1974.
- Thomas, Hugh. Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall o f Old Mexico. N ew
York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
- Thouvenot, Marc. “Sahagun and the Florentine Codex: An Example Of the NonDiscovery o f Aztec Writing.” Chipping Away on Earth: Studies in Prehispanic and
Colonial Mexico in Honor o f Arthur J. 0 . Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. Eloise
QinonesKeber5Edt. Lancaster: Labyrinthos, 1994. P .2 1 -2 8 .
- Todorov, Tzevetan. The Conquest o f America. N ew York: Harper Perennial, 1982.